


Remind Me to Thank Jack for a Lovely Week

by Linpatootie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, M/M, Post Season 1, ZellerPrice, more cherry pie than a man ever needs, the littlest ship that could, where Lin takes her favourite trope and applies it to every fandom she's ever been in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:11:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 28,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/910913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linpatootie/pseuds/Linpatootie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The summer after Will Graham is imprisoned, Jack Crawford gets called onto a possible serial killer case in Michigan and takes Brian and Jimmy along. The case is gruelling. The associations are worse. And to top off an already wonderfully complicated situation, the local Cherry Festival has ensured all hotels are fully booked, which means Brian and Jimmy have no choice but to share a room. Shenanigans, with a healthy dose of dead homeless people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am European and have not been to the USA in my life, let alone to Traverse City, Michigan. I researched my butt off, but took some creative license here and there. [The National Cherry Festival](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cherry_Festival), however, is very much real and held during the first full week of July every year.  
> I would also really very much would like to extend my great big thanks to my very lovely beta Luna, of course, who oddly managed not to throttle me *throws confetti*

When Jack Crawford requested his assistance on a case for the first time since Will Graham was imprisoned , Brian found himself twitching violently for a couple minutes. It wasn’t really fair, because even Jack could not have foreseen the outcome of that one, but it was a gut reaction he didn’t have too much control over. An involuntarily muscle spasm. The vague urge to vomit copiously.

Will Graham had been locked up in the Baltimore Hospital for the criminally insane for two months. Winter had dragged itself out of the world, followed by a hesitant spring which bloomed straight into a furiously bright summer, and Brian had unknowingly worked alongside a serial killer for the better part of a year and was still trying to work that one out.

He had expected to feel more vindicated. He’d never liked the guy, after all, had always said there was something off about him. He thinks this should put him in an ‘I told you so’ sort of place. He thinks it’d be something to brag about, for someone like him, but it isn’t. It isn’t at all.

This was someone he knew, someone he’d watched as he did his thing, and as it turns out he made fishing lure out of dead people and they weren’t even entirely convinced he hadn’t gone and actually _eaten_ the Hobbs girl and that was no bragging matter.

Brian didn’t talk about it with anyone and for quite some time expertly avoided everyone else who had somehow been involved, at some point actively ducking into the ladies’ room when he spots Alana Bloom walking down the hall. Explaining himself to the lady from administration standing there washing her hands was a lot easier than facing Bloom, after all. Ostrich politics. If I don’t see it, if I don’t look into your eyes and see how much it hurts, then it’s not real.

The others had responded in their own ways. Beverly had insisted on rallying against everything and everyone, struggling so visibly that people had no idea how to handle her. She had, after all, been on a friendly basis with Graham. She and Brian teetered on the edge of a massive fight for weeks, their personalities and opposing sentiments towards Will rubbing against each other, but it never happened and the whole thing grew cold and hurtful and easier to avoid.

I’m sorry your friend killed people, is what he should have said to her. I’m sorry I didn’t know what to say to you about that. I’m sorry I’m not that person.

Jimmy, in his turn, had thrown himself onto restyling the fingerprint database, something of a pet project he’d been trying to push through for years. It was also about as far from being in the field as he could manage without actively quitting the bureau. Brian gets to see him all the time, of course, in the cafeteria, in the hallways, and they exchange mostly playfully jibing pleasantries that don’t require any kind of recognition that they processed the evidence against their coworker together.

He genuinely hasn’t spoken to Jack Crawford all those months. He’s barely even seen him, to a point where he wondered if he was taking a leave of absence. So when his phone rings and an agent whose name he instantly forgets tells him he’s wanted in Crawford’s office, he really needs a moment.

Jimmy Price too, the guy says, and Beverly Katz. Brian takes a minute, waits for the hallway to stop swinging from left to right, then turns on his heel and heads towards Crawford’s office with determination.

He texts Jimmy, unnecessarily, as the agent had already called him too. Pendrell is his name, Jimmy informs him. Brian knows he’ll forget it again anyway.

Crawford eyes him and Jimmy standing by his desk and appears unhappy. Airplane tickets and far too many thick folders are spread out neatly on his desk, so Brian thinks ‘unhappy’ might be the right place to be.

“Where’s Beverly?” Crawford asks.  
“Spain,” Brian says.  
“On vacation. She left last Tuesday. Should be back around the twentieth,” Jimmy adds.

For just a moment Crawford looks like he’s about to just give up on everything. “Fine. Then it’ll just be the two of you. I need forensic investigators for a case in Michigan.”

“Michigan,” Brian echoes.  
“I hear it’s nice this time of year,” Jimmy says.  
“Oh yes, very lovely, especially now that they may have a serial killer on their hands.”

The words drop between them like a neat pair of cluster bombs. A serial killer case. They haven’t worked one of those since... well.

“Two victims so far. Homeless men, both strangled and abandoned in dark corners of back alleys with their lungs removed. Both killed in the past three days. If the killer keeps going at this speed the victim count will rise faster than I care for, so let’s catch this guy.”

The lungs removed. Such a dark detail, thrown in with such gracelessness. Jack all but glossed over it, and Brian understands why. Cassie Boyle. It can’t possibly be connected, but the feeling comes back again: the muscle spasm, the painful twitch.

“When do we leave?” Jimmy asks. Bless his cotton socks, Brian thinks, such a practical guy.  
“Our flight leaves in three hours.”  
That’s it, really. Not even the opportunity to decline, though Brian knows he wouldn’t have anyway.

No matter how much you may _want_ to, you don’t actually say no to being asked onto a case by Jack Crawford. Doing that would spell ‘career suicide’ in the most frightful way, and he’s not even sure that happening to be on a vacation in fucking Europe will excuse Beverly from staggering down just a notch or two in Crawford’s appreciation. How dare she live her life while some random psycho butchers people in Michigan, after all.

Their flight is delayed by twenty minutes. Crawford is agitated, yells at some poor flight attendants who honestly can’t help the situation, and Brian sits on a blue plastic seat in the boarding area and fidgets with the strap of his carry-on bag. Jimmy stands by the window and watches the planes, quietly, his bag by his feet and his hands clasped behind his back.

He looks odd, standing there. Jimmy isn’t a summer person. He’s cardigans and sweater vests, soft cozy clothes and those awful hats he wears when it gets really cold. Standing in a short-sleeved, button-up plaid shirt he looks oddly misplaced and geeky - all he’s missing is the pocket protector. His hands clench and unclench behind his back and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other in a tiny, uncomfortable dance.

Of course. Jimmy hates to fly. Brian wonders how he could have forgotten that, albeit briefly. He stands and moves next to him, clasping his hands behind his back too. Solidarity. Kind of.  
“You okay, buddy?”  
“No. But yeah. I’ll live. Wish we could have driven.”

“That’s like a twelve hour drive.”  
“Hence the flying. Just don’t expect me to be _happy_ about it.” Jimmy scowls at the plane, standing there waiting for the boarding to begin.  
“Well, I’m here for you. Just don’t throw up on me,” Brian says.

“You gonna hold my hand?” Jimmy looks at him from the corner of his eye and actually gives him a bit of a smile. Well, that’s good. Better than cranky pre-flight jitters, anyway.  
“If that’ll make you feel better.”  
“That’ll make me feel something, alright.”

Brian grins out the window. They’ve always done this, this playful sort of semi-flirting. It’s like a game, who can come up with the most creative innuendos, who can get away the longest with skating around the edges of what’s considered appropriate workplace behavior. He doesn’t attach too much value to it, doesn’t spend a lot of time searching for a hidden meaning.

He knows how deep his attachment to Jimmy runs. He also knows it’s not something he’s ready to actively pursue yet, and may never be, and that’s fine.  
He likes that they’re uncomplicated. He dislikes they’re not as uncomplicated as they used to be, thanks to extraneous circumstances he has no control over. It was a little ridiculous how boring his days were without Jimmy’s sharp sense of humor cutting through them every now and then, and he didn’t quite realize how much he’s missed it until it’s presented to him again.

He and Jimmy work well together in more ways than one, and it’s actually quite nice to watch bits of that quietly seep back into his life. Not everything dies, he reminds himself. Will Graham didn’t kill everything he touched.

Eventually, they get to board. Brian can only wonder if Jack succeeded in intimidating the plane into the air, and falls asleep in the window seat next to Jimmy shortly after take-off and doesn’t wake up until they’re ready to land in Michigan.

Traverse City is positively crawling with people. Brian eyes them with distaste as Crawford drives them to the local morgue, where both victims are kept. The sun is out in full force. Kids are enjoying their ice cream, pretty girls are wearing pretty skirts, and Brian feels funny about being on his way to cutting open a couple of homeless guys when all this happy summer stuff is happening.

“Cherry Festival,” Jimmy says.  
“What?”  
“It’s the annual Cherry Festival. Every year at the start of July. That’s why there’s so many people.”  
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Jimmy shrugs, still looking out the window.  
“How do you even know that?” Brian asks.  
“I am a fountain of knowledge.”  
“Or, alternatively, you read the roadside signs,” Jack grumbles, and Jimmy laughs.

They are met by the medical examiner, a stern-looking woman of about fifty who shakes his hand like she’s got something to prove. The agent who called them on the phone is there too, Pendrell, a nervous redhead who appears entirely too eager to be working with Jack Crawford. They exchange insincere greetings and Jack disappears with Pendrell to God knows where.

Brian and Jimmy have no time to waste on sightseeing. They have bodies to cut up, after all. The medical examiner – Ellis, Brian reminds himself – shows them the facilities, which are simple but sufficient. She rolls out the two corpses, and Brian sighs with some dejection as she zips one of the body bags open and reveals the large gaping wound over the chest cavity, left there by the killer. He exchanges a look with Jimmy, and they get to work without another word.

Despite the state the bodies are in, the autopsies are fairly straightforward. Cause of death genuinely strangulation. Lungs removed post-mortem in a way that suggests the perpetrator barely knows how to cut the crust off his sandwiches. The alcohol content in one of the victim’s blood is insanely high, but they agree this probably doesn’t have so much to do with the crime as with the poor guy having lived in a cardboard box behind a deli.

They find no usable fingerprints, no fibers, no stray hairs or anything conclusive. The bruising around the necks give them some insight into the weight and strength of the guy, but not enough to go on. They are essentially up a creek, and Jack’s going to whack them with the paddle they’ve not been able to find.

“You do know this means we’re basically going to have to sit around and wait for a third victim,” Brian says quietly as he peels off his gloves.  
“Unfortunately, yes,” Jimmy says, and they are both still for a long moment that weighs more than any moment has the right to.

Jack return with not much more to go on, though they hadn’t expected him to. Brian sends some samples back to Quantico to be analyzed, the facilities here simply not up to snuff, and all they have left to do now is wait. For what, none of them like to specify. Jack leaves them with directions to their motel, and Jimmy lets Brian drive which he thinks is nice of him, really.

The motel turns out to be a collection of separate cabins, dotted past a quaint, pine-tree strewn lane. The sign at the gates tell them all rooms are full, and Brian gets a funny feeling he can’t quite explain.

The motel manager explains it to them soon enough, though.

“I really am genuinely sorry, but everything else is full. It’s the Cherry Festival, you know. You’re lucky I was able to get this much for you,” he says from safely behind the receptionist’s desk. An acne-dotted teenage boy dithers behind him, looking about as apologetic as the motel manager doesn’t. Brian wonders if it’s his son, but doubts it. Most likely he’s just some local kid earning a little extra money during his summer holidays by cleaning up motel rooms.

“Look, can’t you switch some things around, I’m sure the bureau wouldn’t mind paying –“ Brian tries, knowing the bureau would, actually, mind a great deal, but it’s no use.  
“There’s nothing to switch around. The motel is full, the cabins are full. You can go try other places, but I assure you, this time a year, you won’t be able to find nothing.”

“This is just not acceptable,” Brian says. “There has to be more. Who do you think we are, a couple of random passersby?” The man puffs up his chest, clearly agitated by Brian’s admittedly testy tone of voice, but it’s Jimmy who neatly deflates the whole situation.  
“We’ll take it. It’s fine.”  
“What? Jimmy, we can’t just –“

“I’m tired and smell like the morgue. I just want to take a shower and sleep. If you want to stand here and argue over a non-existent empty room, you do that, but I am taking the one that’s available.”

Brian stares at him for a moment, not really sure what to say. Jimmy has a point, even if it’s an unfortunate one, so he just goes and gives into it with a shrug and a mildly irritated wave of his hand. He foresees lots of pissy Tweets in his distant future, though.

“Good. Great,” Jimmy says. “If something frees up in the next couple of days, we would greatly appreciate it if you could arrange something for us, though?”  
The motel manager nods, smiles, looks every bit like he knows nothing is going to free up in at least a week, and hands them a key with a massive, solid wood keychain dangling from it. A great big ‘116’ has been carved into it.

Street lamps just barely illuminate the lane down the motel property. It’s all quite rustic, what with the wind rustling in the trees and crickets chirping in a bunch of bushes somewhere. It’s remarkably quiet too, even if all the cabins are indeed occupied. All Brian can hear is the occasional white noise of someone’s television, the distant whine of a crying child, but all else is just nature pecking away at the edge of this, apparently, cherry-strewn city.

They stop in front of a small, blue cabin with white doors and window frames. Brian sighs as Jimmy leads the way, opens the door and steps into an entirely too musty room. It doesn’t offer much. A small bathroom, a small television, a small fridge, and one queen-sized bed covered in the ugliest red and green bedspread Brian has ever seen.

“No really, what fuzzy fresh hell is this,” he says with a groan as Jimmy puts his bag on a lone chair and flicks on the light switch.  
“I couldn’t tell you. Keep the door open. I do enjoy spending my nights in the company of mosquitoes.”

Brian shuts the door feeling like the world’s biggest butt monkey, deposits his bag willy-nilly on the floor, and raises his hands rather helplessly to the room. “This breaches so many FBI protocols I don’t even know where to start.”  
“Do you think Jack knew about this?”  
“Of course he knew, the great big asshole.”

Jimmy sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed, running both hands through his hair. It jumps out at Brian that he’s never actually seen Jimmy do that, and he’s not sure why it’s important.  
“I wonder where he went, anyway,” Jimmy says.  
“Some fancy hotel with a huge bed and a Jacuzzi. Hot and cold running room service. Cable porn. The works.”

Jimmy chuckles, holding his phone up to his face. “Well, at least we got Wi-Fi.”  
“Well huzzah! Thank everything for small favors,” Brian grumbles as he unzips his bag and rummages around for his iPad.

There’s a nervous knock on their door. Brian opens it, and stares down at the kid he saw at the reception earlier. He’s holding two cans of Fanta, perspiration beading on the cold, tin surface.  
“Sirs. S-sorry to disturb. I just. On the house, to apo-apologize for the uh, room,” he stutters around his braces. He holds out the cans. Brian accepts them, dumb-founded, and the kid disappears again with a nod of his head and a barely intelligible ‘enjoy your stay’.

Brian turns, pushing the door shut with his foot, and holds the cans up to Jimmy who bursts into a giggle leaning dangerously close to manic.

“Oh goodie. Soda pop.”  
“The place probably doesn’t have an alcohol license so this was the best he could do,” Brian says, handing a can to Jimmy as he sits down next to him. They pop the tabs and drink in silence, Jimmy still quietly giggling into his can every so often.

“So how are we gonna do this? Rotate the bed, so we both take the floor every other night?” Brian says carefully. This is awkward. Their normally uncomplicated flirting aside, this is the most awkward situation he’s been in, and he wants to burrow into the walls and never come out.

Jimmy sighs a tired, weary sigh and hangs his head. “Please don’t do that. It’s a big bed, Brian. We can just share it like normal people.”  
“I don’t think normal people would share.”  
“Then we’ll share it like abnormal people. I’m not sleeping on the floor anyway, it looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed since bellbottoms were in style.”  
That’s a slight exaggeration. It may not have been vacuumed any time this week, but Brian thinks this floor has seen a Hoover at least once or twice in his lifetime. Still, though.

“So many FBI protocols, Jimmy,” he whines.  
“If the HR people break down our door at dawn to bust us for inappropriate conduct, I’ll tell them you were simply here to help me work through my debilitating fear of the dark. Grow up. I won’t hump you in your sleep.”

He finishes his soda with one big gulp and unenthusiastically half-crumbles the can. He looks around for a waste basket but finds none, and for a moment looks completely defeated. “Okay. I’m just gonna take a shower. You... do whatever it is you do.” He kicks off his shoes and starts rummaging around his bag. He says nothing further, steps into the bathroom with his toothbrush and a clean t-shirt, and Brian hears him fiddling with the apparently faulty lock.

“Same way I don’t have to worry about you humping me in my sleep, you don’t have to worry about me deciding to join you in the shower!” Brian calls out.  
“Shame!” Jimmy answers and simply leaves the door unlocked. Brian hears him turn on the shower, shut the squeaky doors to the shower cabin, and watches as little tendrils of steam force their way up from under the door.

With a groan, he lets himself fall backwards onto the bed. This is just not right. He’s barely accepted that he and Jimmy can make passes at each other without freaking out. He doesn’t think he’s quite ready to literally get into bed with him. Even if it’s platonically. Or maybe especially if it’s platonically.

He has no idea and just lies there, counting to twenty in his head with his eyes closed to keep himself from going off on some angry rant right there in their little matchbox of a room, then violently pushes himself up from the bed and begins to undress.  
He usually sleeps naked. He didn’t even bring any pajamas or some such, which is now one of those mistakes he will never ever make again in his life. A t-shirt and boxers it is, then, but he’s not necessarily _happy_ about it. He fiddles with the air-conditioning for a bit, turning it up then sits cross-legged on the bed and takes out his contact lenses.

He’s just turned on the tiny TV, his glasses on his nose, when Jimmy emerges from the bathroom. He, too, is now just wearing boxers and a blue t-shirt, and his damp hair is pointing every which way. He has the knobbliest knees Brian has ever seen, and he frowns at him as he makes his way to his bag and pulls out a comb.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” Jimmy says as he combs his hair down flat. Pity. Brian thinks it looked sort of neat, all sticking out.  
“Contacts. You’re a forensic analyst, and you never noticed that before?”

“I look for details on dead people. You, my friend, are very much alive.”  
He stuffs the comb back into his bag and crawls onto the bed, eyes on the television. It’s a Jurassic Park rerun. Timmy’s stuck up the damn tree and it’s all very intense.

“I’m near-sighted. Wore glasses since I was twelve, got beat up twice a week until finally my parents caved and let me have contacts when I was sixteen.”  
“Did it help the beatings?”  
“No. But at least I felt a lot cooler while I was being stuffed into my locker.”

Jimmy laughs, scratching at his chest, still sort of side-eyeing the TV as if he’s genuinely interested in whether or not Timmy and Dr. Grant are going to out-climb the falling car.

Brian rolls off the bed and saunters into the tiny bathroom to brush his teeth. The mirror is still half fogged up from Jimmy’s shower, and the room smells of warm, generic shower gel for men. It’s not a bad smell. It’s actually a kind of Jimmy smell he thinks he rather likes, but the air is so moist and heavy that he wishes he could open up a window or turn on a fan. The bathroom, however, has none.

He brushes his teeth, splashes some water across his face, takes a piss, turns around a couple times wondering if he forgot something and slinks back out. Jimmy has, in the mean time, pushed the bedspread entirely off the bed, and is sitting back against the headboard with his legs under the thin white sheets.

On the television set a gigantic T-rex is chasing a Jeep with Jeff Goldblum in it and Brian stands and watches it for a bit, rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand.

“Do you want to finish watching the movie?” Jimmy asks.  
“Not really. I’ve seen it before. About, ah, twenty times. Still. Dinosaur.” He gestures vaguely at the screen, and Jimmy chuckles.

“Turn the AC down, would you? Not healthy to sleep with it on.”  
Brian complies obediently like the good boy he only is when Jimmy asks him to do stuff while Jimmy waves the remote as he turns off the TV, pats his pillow into shape and scoots down with a sigh.

“You sure it’s not too early for you to sleep?”  
“It’s past eleven, and I spent several hours in an airport, three hours on a plane, and then five hours in a morgue today. Trust me, it’s really not,” Brian says as he puts his glasses on his bedside table and slides into bed.

It’s intensely awkward for a moment. He wonders how he should lie, as to not risk any of his body parts accidentally rubbing against Jimmy’s. He wonders if he’ll snore. He wonders if he’ll talk in his sleep. He’s entirely too aware of the living, breathing body next to him, separated only by a few inches of stale, air-conditioned air and one thin cotton sheet. The mattress is too soft, too worn, and definitely inclines towards the middle which means he is going to have to actively work at not rolling there in his sleep and winding up in a cozy, unintentional cuddle with his coworker.

He side-eyes Jimmy, only to notice Jimmy is side-eying him right back, and watches him struggle to keep a grin off his face.

“Well this is just a whole new level of intimacy for the both of us,” Jimmy says.  
“I was going to bitch on Twitter about this situation, but in hindsight, broadcasting to the world I’m sharing a bed with a dude might not be the greatest plan.”

Jimmy chuckles quietly, shaking his head. “Twitter. God,” he mumbles with the exasperation only a baby boomer could manage when confronted with the 21st century’s need for constant communication.

“I wonder what would have happened if Bev had come, though. Would Jack have pulled another hotel out of his ass, that did have more than one room free?” Brian asks.  
“I don’t know. I like to think he’d have us share this room with the three of us, curled up on one bed like a litter of puppies.”

“She’d take the bed and make us both sleep on the floor.”  
“Reality is a harsh mistress.”

Brian reaches up, yanks on the cord hanging down the wall by their headboard and turns off the light. The room is plunged into a not-quite-darkness, thanks to the lamp right outside the cabin and the curtains being flimsier than the motel manager’s apologies.

Crickets chirp happily amongst themselves outside their door, and Brian can see little winged things right outside their window. He isn’t sure whether they’re moths or small bats but has no problems with either. Meanwhile, both Jimmy and him lie on their backs and say nothing. Brian feels oddly bewildered by the situation and wonders if he’s just really tired.

“I haven’t worked with you in months and now I’m in bed with you,” he concludes out loud.  
“I’m not sure which part of that is the biggest issue,” Jimmy says, and Brian thinks that’s pretty clever.  
“The first.”  
“Oh?”

“I missed working with you. Despite... despite...”  
“Yeah. Me too.”  
It’s somehow easier to say with the lights off. Brian supposes there’s miles of yarn to spin from that one but rather wouldn’t dally on it too much. He hopes this breaks the ice, although he supposes it was never particularly icy between them in the first place. He hopes this makes things easier.

He hopes he’ll fall asleep soon since these introspective tangents aren’t doing him much good.

“I usually sleep naked,” Jimmy says musingly into the gray static of the room.  
“Oh God, me too,” Brian blurts. “I’m so uncomfortable I could die.”  
They look at each other in the not-quite-dark and burst into laughter.


	2. Chapter 2

When Brian wakes up, his face smushed into his pillow, Jimmy is already up. It takes him a moment, staring at the glaringly empty spot on the left side of the bed with some trepidation as to where his unexpected roommate has gone, when the toilet flushes and he feels, for some odd reason, comforted.

He doesn’t know why he felt suddenly nervous when he thought Jimmy was gone, but he tries not to think about it.

He rolls onto his back just as Jimmy steps into the room. He’s already washed up, wearing pants and the ugliest undershirt Brian has ever seen. It’s white and sleeveless and about as unflattering as it gets. 

Jimmy is usually quite particular about his clothes, matching color and patterns well, so it surprises Brian to find this is what he wears underneath. His arms and shoulders are stronger than he’d expected them to be, though, and Brian realizes he’s staring and closes his eyes. 

_Don’t think of Jimmy as attractive,_ he reminds himself. _That’s one complication in the work relationship you do not need to be having during this case._

“Morning,” Jimmy says, shrugging on the shirt he was wearing the day before.  
“What time is it?” Brian asks.  
“Almost eight. The alarm hasn’t even gone off yet, but I was going to wake you soon anyway. Thought we might go hunt for some breakfast before we head back to the morgue.” 

Brian opens his eyes to see Jimmy button up his shirt, stuff the tails into the waistband of his pants, and closes them again as he rolls out of bed and lands unsteadily on his feet. “Alright. Gimme a couple minutes to get dressed.” 

The couple minutes turn into almost twenty, most of them spent meticulously applying expensive hair gel. Jimmy gives him a look but wisely says nothing, just of twitches one of the corners of his mouth up into a half grin as they saunter on down to the parking lot. The early morning sun is crisp, pleasant, and there’s something sweet on the air Brian doesn’t remember there being there the day before.

As it turns out, it’s about a dozen diners, restaurants, coffee places, all baking fresh cherry pies for the day. It’s astounding. They drive through the city centre, one sign after the next all but begging them to please come in and have their pie. They pick one at random, take a seat by the window, and a busty girl of about twenty brings them both coffee before they’ve even asked for it.

Jimmy orders waffles. Brian does, in fact, order the cherry pie. Jimmy raises an eyebrow at him and he shrugs. “When in Rome, right? Besides, it does smell good.”

Jimmy adds a stupid amount of sugar to his coffee while Brian looks out the window at a city just about waking up to another lovely festival day. It looks like something out a movie almost, near-perfect Americana, and he’s way too jaded for all this. “Such a nice place to find dead people in,” he muses, and Jimmy chortles into his cup.

He’s only halfway through his pie, which actually is nice, all tart and gooey like homemade cherry pie ought to be, when Jimmy’s phone rings. He knows what that’s bound to mean and shovels the remainder of his pie into his gob, narrowly avoiding dropping a fork-full on his shirt, and has his mouth entirely too full when Jimmy informs him that was, as expected, Jack Crawford.

“Third victim. We’ve got a crime scene to investigate.”  
He feels bad about how glad he is. A new crime scene, a new corpse, means new evidence which might be helpful. He doesn’t voice it, but from the frankly emotionless way in which Jimmy chugs the last of his coffee and throws a handful of dollar bills onto the table he knows he feels it too.

The alley, sealed with police tape and surrounded by a small army of police officers to keep the tourists out, manages to smell like cherries and death all at once. The victim, so far a John Doe in his late fifties, has been left behind a dumpster, atop some cardboard he purportedly used as his bed. Agent Pendrell is pacing back and forth the alley, looking for God knows what, and Brian observes him for an entertained moment.

They crouch beside the victim, and Jimmy sighs. “Well. Cause of death isn’t going to be difficult,” he says, gesturing at the large knife still sticking out the victim’s eye socket.   
“Damn. And lungs are taken again,” Brian says, taking more pictures than he’ll actually need.

To say the lungs are taken is an understatement. His entire chest cavity is a gaping hole, crudely ripped open and torn up. The heart is still there but not where it should be, and Brian doesn’t even want to imagine the violence it took to crack open the ribcage without any proper equipment.

“Not strangled this time,” Jack says, towering over the two of them with his hands on his hips.   
“Nope,” Jimmy says as he straightens. “Knife to the brain, through the eye socket. I’d estimate the blade to be about 10 inches long, but we’ll tell you more about that one after I work up the courage to yank it out.” 

“Are we sure it’s the same guy?” Jack says, and Brian shrugs.  
“How big are the odds that this place has two lung thieves on their hands? Everything else is the same except for the cause of death.”

“This isn’t about the killing itself,” Jimmy says absentmindedly, watching as Pendrell speaks to the police officer who received the call about the body. “The lungs are what matter. How the unwilling donors die is just a means to an end.”  
Brian straightens, looks around, and notices the absence of something rather important. “He didn’t do it here, though.”

“How so?”  
“The way he removed these lungs. He didn’t go about it with care. He butchered him. He cracked his chest open, severed major arteries, rummaged around the chest cavity like a kid going through his toy chest. There should be blood and gore everywhere, but there isn’t.” He gestures around the alley. “The blood sprayed across the cardboard here and here. That’s from the initial stab to the eye. But whatever the killer did after that, he didn’t do it here.”

“So he kills John Doe where he sleeps, takes him with him to perform his little surgery and brings him back once he’s done?” Jack says.   
“Yes,” Brian says simply, raising his latex-covered hands.   
“Then where does he take him?”

“I don’t... somewhere safe, where he won’t be disturbed. Probably not a big place, probably not far from here. Maybe...” It’s like a little light flickers on in his head. He wonders if this is what it felt like for Will Graham and feels immediately horrid about that. “A van.”  
“A van?”

“Yes. It’d be perfect. It’s portable. He kills the guy, drags him into his van, cuts out the lungs and dumps the guy again. Gets to drive off with his trophies and get away from the crime scene quickly.”  
Jack gives him a look that borders between disbelief and appreciation. Brian feels a bit uncomfortable under its weight, but then Jack turns and starts barking orders at the surrounding officers. 

“We’re looking for a van! I want witnesses, security camera footage, anything! Someone saw a van drive into this alley last night and I want them interrogated today!” The officers swarm into action, and Pendrell trots out the alley towards nearby stores, surely to request copies of their security tapes. Even if their cameras would not actively get the alley on screen, they still might show any vans driving down the street at ass o’clock last night, after all.

Jimmy gives him a smile and a little nod. _Good job_ , he’s telling him, and Brian smirks at him. Oh yes, he’s on _fire_ alright.

It’s only a few hours later that they have the John Doe, still unidentified, on the autopsy table in the morgue. Ellis hovers nearby, clearly wishing to assist but not intervening, and Brian kind of wishes she’d just leave altogether. Jimmy is all the help he needs, really. 

He takes his time with the autopsy and eventually she does just give up, leaving for a late lunch and never coming back. He can see the grin which threatens to break out across Jimmy’s face but never quite does, and feels kind of good about that.

It’s almost six when Jack thunders in, Pendrell in his wake, and crosses his arms at the foot of the table.

“Anything exciting?”  
“You mean apart from the frankly horrific pneumectomy?” Jimmy says. Pendrell eyes the corpse but doesn’t flinch away, which Brian supposes earns him a little respect. Most people don’t handle a fully dissected human so well. 

“Not much,” Jimmy continues. “No defensive injuries. The knife was stabbed right through the eyelid, so our poor John Doe was probably asleep when it happened. I thoroughly dusted the handle, but there are no prints. Lungs removed, body dumped. He died about four hours before he was found.”

“Is there any chance the lungs were harvested for transplant?” Jack asks.  
“Absolutely not. The way they were removed, I can assure you they are useless.”   
Useless doesn’t even begin to cover it. Bits of lung were still left in the chest cavity. Whatever the hell it was the killer wanted them for, it sure as hell didn’t require them to be in any way viable.

“Any ideas as to what sort of instrument he used to cut out the lungs?”  
Jimmy is looking at him now, raising one eyebrow, because he knows this is his little discovery and wouldn’t want to run with it.  
“I hate to say this, but I think it was a bread knife,” Brian says.

“A bread knife?” Jack echoes.   
“Yes. Look at the markings here, alongside what’s left of the sternum, and here along the side of the ribs. Whatever he used to cut open the ribcage, it was serrated, and not something small and easy to wield. I think it was a bread knife.”

They’re quiet for a long moment as Jack digests the information they’ve just given him, and Brian and Jimmy wait for him to do so.  
“Kitchen knives,” Pendrell then says, musingly. _Well then_ , Brian thinks, _it talks._

“What?” Jack says.  
“They’re both... the knives. The one he used to stab him in the eye with is a carving knife. Now a bread knife to remove the lungs with. They’re both common household knives, everyone has them in their kitchen.”

Brian doesn’t think he owns a carving knife, actually, but he gets the point Pendrell is making. “Last two victims were strangled. This isn’t a guy who knows what he’s doing, who’s prepared everything in advance. He’s just going for the nearest available means of killing them and having a go.”  
“And the nearest available were kitchen utensils?” Jimmy says.

“Maybe the strangling didn’t work as well as he wanted to. Took too long, required too much effort.” Pendrell has a healthy mess of brains in his skull, that much Brian has to give him. He, too, seems very well aware that working with Jack Crawford can only help his career and is shooting to make the most of it. Brian can appreciate ambition.

“This still leaves us nowhere, though,” Brian points out regardless. “We’re looking for someone who owns a bread knife and drives a van. Oh yes, that narrows it down.”   
“Better than nothing. I’m going to go over the evidence we gathered at the scene, see if I can find something else there,” Jimmy says, and Brian nods at him.

Jack disappears again, taking Pendrell with him to check out the homeless shelter. They still need to figure out the victim’s identity, after all, and other homeless people might have seen something in the past week. Mysterious vans driving through alleys, guys wielding bread knives behind the wheel. Brian isn’t feeling so optimistic about the whole thing.

Jimmy made himself a little corner in the morgue, where he’s now diligently covering every last inch of the cardboard they had found the victim on. Going over the bloodstains. Looking for fibers, fluids, fingerprints, anything that might help. He’s intensely thorough, Brian knows by experience, and probably won’t be properly approachable for another two hours.

Brian finishes up the autopsy by himself, closes the chest cavity, neatly sews him up as best as he can manage after the hackjob performed by the killer. Usually it’s just his own Y-incision he’s closing up, so this does require some creative problem-solving right there.

“What are you doing?” he hears Jimmy ask him twenty minutes in, as he’s minutely stitching up the wound. He supposes his willingness to communicate means he’s not finding much on the cardboard, which is a little depressing.

“Closing him up. You never know if they might still find next of kin. Someone who knew him, who can identify him. I want him to be... presentable.”   
Jimmy is quiet for a moment and Brian keeps on working, perfect, even stitches made by practiced fingers. “That’s nice of you,” Jimmy then says, and Brian hadn’t really thought of it like that.

He finishes up, scribbles ‘John Doe’ on the nametag with some distaste, and wheels the guy into the freezer. 

“I feel awful for thinking this, but at least it’s not eighteen year old girls,” he says as he pulls his gloves off. He still has her so clear in his mind - this young, naked girl impaled on a stag head. He still wonders how Graham pulled that off, where he got the stag head from, what on Earth he ever did with the lungs. He wonders what this killer is doing with the lungs. He thinks of Graham’s dogs and wonders if this guy has pets and what he feeds them. He’s instantly nauseated.

“That’s a pretty awful thing to think, yeah,” Jimmy mutters, pulling him back to the cold, stainless steel reality of the morgue and grounding him there.

“Sometimes I hate this job and what it does to us.”  
“Me too.”  
“Not that I’d rather go do something else.”  
“Me neither.”

Jimmy doesn’t look up from his work as they talk, holding the cardboard up to the lamp over his workstation. “Does this look like a footprint to you?” 

Brian steps up, leans in, shrugs. “Not sure. Might be. It’s really faint though. Even if it is a footprint, it may have been there for ages. Might just be Johnny Doe’s.”  
“Worth checking out. I’m going to see if I can bring it out more clearly.”

Brian nods, steps back, shrugs off his lab coat. “I’m hungry. I’ll go find us some dinner, all right?”   
“Good idea. See you in a little bit.”   
Jimmy is not paying him much attention, but that’s alright. He is, after all, doing what he does best. 

He walks around outside longer than he has to. He’s been stuck inside the morgue for over six hours, it’s a beautiful second of July, and the whole place still smells like summer and cherries. Michigan really is lovely this time of year, just like Jimmy said, and he wanders around with his hands in his pockets for a while.

Eventually he returns to the morgue with pizza, which he and Jimmy eat in Ellis’ office. They don’t talk much. Jimmy doesn’t mention the footprint again, which means it was nothing they could work with. Again they have to wait - for the toxicology report, for Jack and Pendrell to unearth something useful. For a fourth victim even, maybe, although neither of them voice it this time.

They head back to the motel early. Jimmy plans to work on his report there while Brian thinks he might go for a jog, to work off the junk food and excess frustration. He saw a nice road leading past the bay that he thinks might be nice in the evening sun. 

When he returns, his t-shirt stuck to his back with sweat, he spots the teenage boy. He’s mowing the lawn with a lawn mower that looks older than the kid himself and which is so noisy that Brian wonders if none of the guests have ever complained about it. The kid turns it off when he spots Brian and nearly falls off the thing in his urgency to greet him.

“Sir! Good, good evening, sir. Is the room okay?”  
Okay is not the right word. Okay is not what a small room is when you have to share it with someone you work with. Still, it seems odd to voice that to someone who genuinely can’t help that, so he doesn’t. “It’s fine.” 

“I’m sure Mr. Sanderson will have another room for you soon, sir,” the boy says. Brian isn’t sure of that at all. Brian is pretty sure Mr. Sanderson would like to make them share that room for the rest of their natural lives, if he had any say in it. 

“You worked for Mr. Sanderson long?”  
“Since last year. Just a summer thing. I’d like to work here more, but there’s not much to do outside tourist season.”  
“He pay you well?”  
“Sure.”

Brian grins at him, but the boy looks uncomfortable. He guesses dear Mr. Sanderson doesn’t pay the kid as well as he should, but Brian supposes that’s all part of the teen experience. He remembers a summer spent washing dishes in a local restaurant for next to nothing. Wound up getting him his first kiss though, from one of the cute girls waiting tables, so that made up for it.

“Bet your parents are proud of you, working through your summer vacation.”  
The boy shrugs. “Not really. My mother’s sick. My father’s busy. I’m just working so they have one thing less to worry about.”

Oh, ouch. Brian really needs to do something about that foot-in-mouth habit he’s got going for himself. “Sorry to hear that,” he manages. “Nothing serious, I hope?”

“Lung cancer. Terminal. It is what it is.” The kid actually _blushes_ and Brian wishes he’d brought his gun so he could’ve shot himself in the foot as a distraction. _’God fucking damn it, Brian Zeller’_ , he thinks, _’just talk about the weather like a normal person.’_

“You and your friend are here to investigate those murders, right? Going well?” the kid says.  
 _No, it’s not going well at all, it’s a disaster_ , Brian thinks, but he certainly can’t say that. “We’re working hard on it,” is what he says instead, but he just got back from an early evening jog across a sun-dappled bay and the kid doesn’t look convinced. 

He only then realizes the kid referred to Jimmy as his friend, which makes him feel a little weird.

“You get back to your lawn now, before your boss yells at me for keeping his employees from their work,” Brian says with a grin. The kid grins back at him, all braces and acne and no promise of any of that turning around for him for at least another four years. Brian gives him a wave and sets down the lane at a brisk pace, only turning around at the last minute.

“Hey kid, what’s your name, anyway?” he calls back.  
“Jonah! Jonah Medley!” With that, the kid turns his lawn mower back on and hobbles across the field. 

Back at their little cabin of reluctant intimacy, he walks in to find Jimmy attempting to catch a moth. Not even a little one either, a large owlet moth flitting back and forth the cabin in panicky circles to escape the agitated forensic analyst chasing it. 

“Having a thrilling evening, are we?” he says. Jimmy hurtles a stream of cusswords across the cabin, most of which displaying a thrilling verbal creativity Brian has never heard him display before and which might have him falling a little bit in love with Jimmy right there, and all but pounces the moth which chose to perch right in the middle of the bathroom door. 

With the moth trapped between his cupped hands he stomps towards the door. Brian ducks out the doorframe and Jimmy releases the moth outside, watching as it flaps away and then decisively slamming the door shut.

“I’ve been chasing it for twenty minutes. This close to just throwing a book at it, but the only book we have is the hotel bible and that just didn’t seem like a very karmically rewarding murder weapon.”  
“Very humane of you, to release it into the wild.”  
“I’m a saint, didn’t you know?” 

The television is on, the sound muted. Commercials, used car something-or-other. Brian watches the screen for a bit anyway, feeling a bit silly for getting transfixed by the moving pictures like a toddler.   
“There was a thing on the news earlier about the murders,” Jimmy says. “ They’re calling him the Traverse City Harvester.”  
“Jesus Christ.”

“I thought it was clever. Harvester, because of the cherry harvest, but also –“  
“Because of the lungs. Yeah. It’s a delight.” 

He leaves Jimmy to the television, escaping into the bathroom for a shower. The shower nozzle hangs ridiculously low. Brian isn’t that exceptionally tall, yet the shower nozzle only about reaches up to his neck and he has to duck in order to wash his hair. It’s a small annoyance on a list of many. He winds up scrubbing himself clean with Jimmy’s generic shower gel for men, mostly because it’s closest at hand. Once he’s done he leaves the shower running on cold for a couple minutes to cool off, even if he knows it’ll just have the opposite effect in the end. 

As he’s drying off, he realizes he’s left his newly appointed sleepwear in the main room. He leaves the bathroom in his boxers, still rubbing his towel though his mop of hair, and isn’t giving that much thought at all until he notices Jimmy is really kind of _staring_.

He raises an eyebrow at him. “If you’re expecting a song and dance number, I’m going to have to disappoint you.”  
“One night in the same bed and you’re half naked in front of me. I can only imagine what surprises I can expect from you tomorrow morning.”  
“You play your cards right, and who knows where this will end up,” Brian quips, dropping his wet towel to the floor in a way that is sure to make his mother twitch even 900 miles away.

“Should have asked Jack to arrange this for me years ago.”  
“Jimmy, if you deliberately made this happen, so help me God I will hurt you.”  
Jimmy just laughs from where he’s slumped on the bed. “Even I am not that diabolical. For God’s sake put your shirt on, I’m going blind from the lamplight glaring off your pasty skin.”

Brian grins at him as he pulls his t-shirt over his head and flops down onto the bed. He reaches for the remote, clicks a button at random and almost chokes on his own giggles as he lands on yet another Jurassic Park rerun. Second one, this time. Jeff Goldblum arguing with his precocious gymnast daughter.

Jimmy groans, pulling his pillow out from under his head and pressing it over his face. Brian just laughs and tosses the remote across the room in surrender.

He doesn’t really fully grasp that they actually just sort of flat-out flirted with each other again until much later when Jimmy’s already curled up asleep and he’s staring at the ceiling in the not-quite-dark. Nothing subtle about it, not just vague innuendos, but flat-out advances being made. He reminds himself they were just dicking around, but feels a lot giddier about the idea than he thinks he should.


	3. Chapter 3

When Brian wakes up, the first thing he becomes aware of is the warm, sleeping body pressed against his back. It snaps him fully awake so quickly that it almost gives him whiplash. He’s about to draw a couple of mean conclusions about Jimmy wandering onto his half of the bed overnight, invading his personal space when he was at his most vulnerable and such, when he notices the truly astounding empty length of bed presented in the most incriminating way in front of him.

It’s not Jimmy who wandered. It’s very much him who somehow inched back into Jimmy’s space until he was close enough to feel his body move with every breath, and spent Lord knows how many hours blissfully asleep there. Jimmy must have slept right through it too, innocent and all, and Brian senses a vague panic blossoming beneath his breastbone .

Just as he’s figuring out how to inch back up again without waking Jimmy , no harm done, the alarm on Jimmy’s phone begins to blare and he freezes. Jimmy moves, switches it off, and chuckles. “So this _is_ a surprise. Comfortable, darling?”  
“Oh my dear God.”

“Well. Good morning, then,” Jimmy says. He reaches, ruffles Brian hair with another entirely too entertained chuckle and quite a large amount of affection, and gets out of bed. Brian lies there utterly mortified and thinking, for some bizarre reason, that the bed is quite cold without Jimmy in it.

He lies there for a while longer, listening to the sound of Jimmy taking a shower. He bets Jimmy has no issues with the nozzle, standing almost a full head shorter than Brian. Typical.

On a whim he grabs his phone from the nightstand and tries to remember the time difference between Michigan and Spain. Six hours? Seven? Either way, it should be somewhere around two or three PM where Bev is, and he pictures her drinking sangria on some sun-dappled square, surrounded by handsome Spaniards.

He hasn’t really spoken to her in a while, had to avoid pressing far too many buttons, but has to admit that now, with everything that’s happening, working with Jimmy again, he _misses_ her. He misses the three of them, running around solving crimes. It’s silly, and possibly a bit juvenile, but what can he say?

‘Yo Bev! How is Spain treating you? Me + J are in Michigan on a case. You got the better deal there for sure.’

It takes a stupidly short amount of time to get a response. Bev, sitting on that square in Spain, ignoring the handsome Spaniards to text her coworker back. He concludes that she misses him too. Might not be true, but he enjoys the small boost to his ego.

‘I’m in Italy, you dick. And it’s great, and I am never coming back. What sort of case?’

Italy. Right. Still a sun-dappled square, just with handsome Italians replacing the Spaniards. His imagination immediately supplies him with cutesy scooters and gelaterias.

‘Serial killer. Messy one. No breaks yet.’  
‘Obviously missing my fabulous input then. How’s Jimmy doing?’  
‘Jimmy’s a bright shining ball of sunshine. We’re sharing a hotel room. Long story.’

It takes a little longer for her reply this time. He pictures her laughing insanely across the square, frightening pigeons and Italians alike.

‘Thanks for that image. I’ll treasure it till the day I die. You two sharing a bed too? Should I expect a wedding invite soon?’

He doesn’t answer her. Lying seems silly but the truth is even sillier and he chucks his phone back onto the nightstand and rolls out of bed to gather his clothes instead.

They breakfast at a different diner than the day before, but Brian again opts for the cherry pie. He thinks he might do that every morning for as long as they’re there and wonders how many mornings that will wind up being.

He has the sinking feeling he will grow sick of the cherry pie long before they leave, which is an entirely too depressing thought to have while stuffing one’s face with the sweet goodness of a proper home-made pie.

Jimmy has oatmeal with raisins and just looks at him funny the entire time.

Ellis unceremoniously hands them a couple packages when they arrive at the morgue. “Your toxicology reports arrived,” she says instead of good morning. “Also your boss called to give me the ID of your John Doe. His name is Warren Oakes. His daughter’s flying in from Nebraska tomorrow.”

Brian quietly praises himself for his decision to sew up John Doe – pardon, Warren Oakes – the day before. He doesn’t suppose he had much contact with his daughter, what with her living in Nebraska and him living behind a dumpster and all, but thinks that if she’d get to see her father for the first time in years he might at least look halfway presentable.

They spend the morning going over the toxicology reports. There’s not much they can incorporate into their final reports to Jack, but they want to be as thorough as possible, and it takes quite a lot of Ellis’ disturbingly strong coffee for them to work through all of the data.

Just as Brian starts contemplating going out to grab some lunch, Jimmy’s phone rings. Brian watches his face fall as he answers it and already knows what’s coming next.

“We have a crime scene. Victim number four,” Jimmy says, putting his phone in his breast pocket.  
“Christ. Is he killing one for each day now?”  
“Apparently. Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”

Another alley, another homeless man, on the completely other side of town but getting entirely too familiar otherwise. The sunlight falls directly into this alley and he struggles to keep the glare of it out his camera lens. Here, too, the sweet tinge of cherries drifts through the air, and it’s really starting to get a little surreal.

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to get some extra patrol cars going at night?” Brian rumbles as he snaps his pictures of the dead man lying lungless in a crumbled heap amidst overflowing trash bags. Jack is arguing with a local police chief about something Brian doesn’t catch and doesn’t care about. It’s hot and stuffy in the alley and his FBI jacket is uncomfortably warm, which doesn’t do much for his ability to empathize with people.

“We already do,” Pendrell says miserably. “We put out an ATL for vans roaming around at night, but it hasn’t gotten us any leads yet.”  
“Guess we’ll have to wait until he’s weeded through the entire homeless population of Traverse City,” Brian says. Pendrell looks entirely too sad at that idea.

They’re only just finishing up collecting evidence and taking pictures when Pendrell’s phone rings again. He answers it and goes impressively green. Brian contemplates directing him away from the corpse before he hurls all over it, but Pendrell hangs ups his phone, sighs deeply and delivers about the last news Brian had wanted to hear.

“They found another one.”  
“Son of a bitch.” The words escape him, a little inappropriate for a crime scene and all, but both Pendrell and Jimmy nod in agreement anyway.

As the first body is collected to be taken to the morgue they trot across town to the second one. As a wonderful improvement to his day, this one has actually been left in the garbage dump. His favorite combination of factors – a decomposing body, garbage, and a sunshiny 90 degrees. On the up side, the garbage is drowning out the freaky scent of cherries.

“This one died before the last one. I’d say about 24 to 30 hours ago,” Jimmy says, crouched by the body, squinting his eyes against the unrelenting sun.  
“That puts the time of death in the middle of the day,” Pendrell says.  
“So we learn our killer isn’t particularly shy. I guess there weren’t many witnesses around here though.”

“I don’t like what this does to the killer’s working grounds,” Jack grumbles behind them. “This is outside the area we’ve put extra patrol cars on.”  
“No stab wounds,” Brian says. “Although the bloodied concave at the back of the head makes it pretty clear what the cause of death was.”

They hang around the garbage dump until Brian thinks he’ll have the smell of it stuck up his nose for the rest of his life, his clothes cling uncomfortably to his skin with a thin layer of sweat and the sunshine has gotten that pretty golden quality only found in late afternoons in July. It touches a shimmery sort of unreality to the dump and Brian thinks he needs to get the hell out of there before he starts composing poetry about waste.

Jimmy collects a stupid amount of evidence, dead set on finding at least _something_ useful, and Pendrell has them take casts of several tire tracks which Brian is pretty sure just belonged to some hapless citizens who brought their garbage here in the past few days.

By the time they return to the morgue, body number one is already waiting for them, and number two is on its way. The only thing Brian knows for sure is that he won’t get to see that picturesque orange sunset today, as they are going to be stuck in the autopsy room for a long, long time.

Over six hours of sifting through dead flesh later, he and Jimmy are running on nothing but coffee and sarcasm and Jack might just up and shoot both of them before dawn.

“Other than the cause of death, no deviations from the last ones,” Brian says with a sigh as he straightens up out of the poor dead guy’s chest cavity and starts to peel off his gloves. “Lungs removed post mortem and not delicately. Cause of death this time is two blows to the back of the head with a blunt object. From the angle, I’d say the victim was lying down and probably asleep when it happened.”

He mimes the action and watches as Pendrell winces. It gives him the kind of satisfaction he thinks he shouldn’t be feeling, but he can blame it on fatigue. He did, after all, perform two three-hour autopsies in a row, after traipsing about crime scenes in the blistering heat for most of the day. He is exhausted and can get his kicks where he can.

“Any ideas as to what the blunt object could have been?” Jack asks, standing with crossed arms and asking the question with the air of a gym teacher who can and will make you run twenty laps if he doesn’t like the answer.

“Could have been anything. The size and impact might imply a baseball bat, although not a wooden one.”  
“Aluminum.”  
“It’s what I’d bet my money on.”

“Those are better than the wooden ones anyway,” Jimmy pipes in. “At least for playing baseball. Can’t say I have enough experience with bashing in heads to really make a substantiated claim about which bat would be preferable for that, though.”

“I think I’m shocked and amazed you had experience in baseball at all, actually.”  
“Oh, sure. Years of little league. I’m an excellent pitcher, thank you very much. ”

“The previous ones did not die of blunt force trauma, though,” Pendrell says. Okay. Clearly Mr. Ambition has no time for small talk.

“Nope. Just these two were bludgeoned to death,” Brian concludes dryly.  
“Would you say the fifth one was beaten with a bat, too?”  
“Yes, I’d say that’s pretty likely.” He tries so hard not be bitchy, but the intent just flies over him. Whoosh, he watches it go.

“So he’s developing an M.O. Trying out methods, seeing what works,” Jack muses.  
“And finding one that works best. Think he found it?” Brian says.

“This way the lungs remain undamaged. That what he’s in it for, right?” Jimmy says. He pulls the chest cavity of the first victim of the day open with one gloved finger, peers inside. “I mean, I’d call this a successful venture for our Harvester.”  
“And a baseball bat is a relatively straightforward weapon, too. Not difficult to wield, easy to come by, and all it takes is one real good blow,” Brian says.

“Which anyone with a little bit of little league experience will have learned how to deal.”  
“Really? They teach you how to bash in heads in little league?”  
“In a manner of speaking.” Jimmy gives him that smirk, the half-there one he always throws at him like there’s no one else in the room who might see it.

“Alright, I’m adding you to our suspect list. I knew all that suppressed rage would boil over eventually.”  
“I’ll have you know I have an excellent alibi.”  
“Oh really?”

“Well, for at least two of these murders I was enjoying your exquisite company in our cabin of love.”  
“Good point.”  
Pendrell gives them an odd look and steps back from the autopsy table as if their good humor might be infectious. Brian is tempted to fake some kind of cough at him.

Jack sighs. Brian almost forgot he was still actually there . “There are five people dead, can we stop the comedy routine?”  
“I’ve been performing autopsies for about three days straight. Let me have my comedy routine. It’s a miracle I’m still coherent at all,” Brian says.

“Well, ‘coherent’,” Jimmy echoes.  
“Something like it.”  
“Delightfully nonsensical.”  
“Thank you.”  
“No problem.”

Brian gets to smirk at Jimmy this time, looks away, has to stop himself from grinning like an idiot because there’s two dead guys in the room with them and that’d be just a little bit too eccentric of him.

“For God’s sake stop flirting across the dead bodies,” Jack snaps. Jimmy actually goes a bit pink at that, and Brian isn’t sure how to place that response. Pendrell looks rather like he’s trying to become one with the furniture though.

“A baseball bat. Before we had a bread knife. We have a killer who uses what appear to be household objects, whatever he can get his hands on,” Jack continues sternly.  
“Guy in a van with a bat. Now there’s an ATL for you,” Brian says.

“I want these two identified. Run their prints through the database, and I want the toxicology reports started first thing in the morning,” Jack says.

“It’s almost eleven.” Brian feels his spirits sink into his very shoes. Jack can’t be serious. For them to fast track the toxicology report, he’ll be setting up cultures until early morning, never mind preparing the samples for the stuff he’d have to send out.

“And the Harvester killed two men in one day. He seems to be in a hurry, and I want to catch him before he weeds out the entire state. Get to work.”

“Surely this can wait until morning.”  
“Need I remind you that you are not on a vacation?”  
“You do not! If this were a vacation, the accommodations would be better!”

He’s snapped at Jack before he managed to catch himself. Jack seems to inflate several inches, and Brian can only a manage a deer in headlights response, too shocked by his own stupidity to do something else. He really ought to make a run for it, before the rather large man squishes him like a bug.

“We’ll get it done, Jack. I’ll mail you our results when we have them.” Jimmy steps in, saves the day, gives Jack one of those good-ole-buddy-mine looks and actually _physically_ moves between him and Brian. Brian feels grateful, if oddly emasculated.

“I didn’t bring you two here to get sassed at,” Jack says with such eerie, icy calm that Brian thinks he’d almost prefer the outright rage. “Get the work done.” With that he turns and leaves with Pendrell trailing after him with a forced smile and a polite nod.

“Suicidal, are we?” Jimmy says, turning to him with a raised eyebrow.  
Brian groans. “My brain to mouth filter disappears when I get tired.”  
“Clearly. Do take care. I’d hate to have to take you back home in a body bag.”

He takes it to heart. For the next couple years, the only words he intends to say to Jack Crawford are ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’

After Jimmy finishes up taking their prints, they wheel the bodies back into the cooler for now. Jimmy feeds the first set into the fingerprint database, and they get to wait for the results for about twenty minutes. They take the time to at least have a short break, hanging quietly at Jimmy’s little workstation.

Brian wishes he could just go take a nap, but the only place here to do that would be on an autopsy table. While he thinks he would actually be more than capable of sleeping on one of those, jaded as he is, he doubts Ellis would appreciate it much.

Jimmy fetches them more crap coffee and prepackaged sandwiches from a vending machine down the hall and they eat in silence. Not that there’s any other way to eat egg salad sandwiches that are about as dry as a summer’s day in Reno. Brian doesn’t even finish it, abandons the crust like a spoiled seven-year-old, and sips his coffee with a mild hatred of life as he watches the hands of the clock creep ever closer to midnight.

Jimmy is giving him that funny look again. He sighs, swirls the last bit of his coffee around in his plastic cup, and just up and broaches the damn subject already.  
“Jack called us out on our flirting.”  
“Not wrongly. We kind of were. We kind of are a lot, after all,” Jimmy says.  
“Well, there’s an odd conversation to kick off in a morgue at midnight.”

“Hey, you brought it up. And let’s not forget you were the one all cuddled up against me this morning,” Jimmy points out. That damn smirk is there again and Brian is just damn glad he’s too tired to blush because he’s pretty sure he’d have done so spectacularly otherwise. Like a fourteen year old girl, check.

"That was... I don’t know what that was. I have no excuse. But it wasn’t _intentional_.”

“It’s okay. I’m teasing you,” Jimmy says, and Brian knows he’s offering him an out.

Brian doesn’t _want_ an out. He’s not sure if he wants an _in_ , either, but he doesn’t want an out and can’t get his thoughts aligned properly enough to put things in a way that make more sense. They’ve been dancing around something for a while, both aware that they’re doing it but both not sure how serious the whole dance is, and, to stick with the delightful metaphor, Brian’s feet are beginning to hurt.  
He thinks, actually, that Jimmy has always assumed he’s just dicking around, that maybe Brian assumed the same about himself for a while too, but right now he thinks he really isn’t so much which is new and a little weird.

He wonders if it’s fatigue enabling these epiphanies, but it’s very clear to him at that moment, in a way that’s not at all as terrifying as he thought it would be, that he kind of sort of _wants_ Jimmy to stop teasing and start... well. He hasn’t thought that through yet, exactly, but yes. He _wants_.  
Huh.

“You’re not just teasing. I know you’re not. But it’s. Okay. A little more than okay.” He can’t really bring himself to look at Jimmy, so he scowls at his coffee and wonders if he can change it into a nice Scotch if he just wishes hard enough. Oh, to not be working a case and able to get absolutely drunk…

“Really?” Jimmy says, and his tone of voice tells Brian he knows _exactly_ what Brian is saying, which is equal parts worrying and thrilling. It’s an odd thing, to be understood by someone even when you’re being vague and more than a little awkward.

“Yes. Fuck. I’m exhausted.” He laughs, and it takes a few beats for Jimmy to laugh along. The situation is stupid anyway. They’re stuck in a morgue near midnight. Brian half-wonders if at the stroke of twelve the corpses will crawl out the cooler to perform a little jig .  
Jimmy’s laptop goes _ding_ . A hit, then. A name, a criminal record full of petty theft and speeding tickets, and, tragically enough, a Master’s degree. Jimmy sighs, adds the details into his report, and goes to feed in the second set of prints.

“I don’t feel like this is getting us anywhere,” Jimmy says, watching the program run on his screen.  
“For such a haphazard, messy killer, he’s really good at hiding his tracks. Gotta give him that,” Brian says.  
“I can’t help but feel he’s just killing as much as he can in a short period of time because he knows we’re gonna catch him soon.”

“Collect as many lungs before we lock him up. Sure.”  
“I’m still dying to find out what he’s needing the lungs _for_ , though.”  
“Me too. Us and our morbid curiosity.”

Jimmy grins at him for that, and Brian blurts out something he’s been thinking about for the past two days.  
“Do you think he eats them?”

Jimmy doesn’t answer straight away, but when he does he’s dead serious. “I’ve entertained the notion.”  
“Think Jack has?”  
“Yeah, I think he has. But I also get why he’s not keen on saying it.”

Jimmy sits back on his chair, folds his hands over his stomach and stares off into space. He’s tired, too, Brian can tell from the lines on his face and the way his eyes keep glazing over, losing their focus. “It’s an odd job, isn’t it, working out what moves someone to something like this? Killing at random and violently tearing out _lungs_. How does someone wake up one morning and think _that’s_ a good idea?”

“I don’t think anyone can ever truly understand what his motivations will be,” Brian says with a shrug.  
Jimmy makes a face, sucks on his lip. “Will would understand,” he says quietly.  
“Well, Will is in prison for killing a bunch of people, and the only reason he understood these motivations is because he felt them himself, so maybe we shouldn’t dwell on that,” he says without thinking.

Jimmy winces like he’s been slapped across the face and Brian feels instantly horrible. Not quite what he was going for with that one.  
“Fuck, I’m sorry. That didn’t come out right,” he says. Jimmy nods but says nothing. Brian wants something, some sign that it’s okay, but knows it’s not.

He’s effectively murdered the mood. Jimmy taps a finger on the touch pad of his laptop, still watching his screen flicker, and remains still. Brian takes a breath, gathers their empty coffee cups, and throws them in the bin.

Will Graham. Cassie Boyle. They never did find out what the hell he did with her lungs. Or to all of Abigail Hobbs, for that matter. He doesn’t want to dwell on that, not now, not at ass o’clock in a morgue in Michigan with Jimmy stoically staring at his screen rather than wise-cracking with him, but now all he can think of is analyzing those stupid fishing lures and bagging Abigail Hobbs’ ear as evidence and he’s having no fun at all.

“I’m going to prepare some samples for the toxicology report,” he mumbles and leaves Jimmy to his database.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s entirely too long after midnight when they get to drag themselves back to their cabin of awkwardly intimate cohabitation, and they hardly speak. Mostly because they’re simply too tired to talk, the words sticking to their palates and refusing to tumble out. All Brian really wants to do is sleep for about sixteen hours, preferably in Jimmy’s company. 

He doesn’t even feel weird about that conclusion. It just sort of is, and considering the uncomfortable note of unease they ended up the night before, he thinks he might even be a tad too ambitious there, but he kind of hopes he’ll wake up huddled close to him again. It doesn’t happen, though. He’s not graceful enough to fake it and plummets into the deep slumber of the dead within minutes of getting into bed anyway. 

Jack calls and wakes them up only shortly after seven. Brian thinks he might just wind up drowning the bastard in the bay for that. He wonders briefly why the hell Jack is already awake himself, but thinks there's actually a genuine possibility he never went to sleep at all, which is oddly terrifying. Jimmy talks to Jack, and Brian staunchly attempts to feign sleep for a bit longer, but Jimmy isn't stupid and knows he's awake. 

"Up and at 'em. He's meeting us in the lab in half an hour," Jimmy says as he gets out of bed.  
Brian groans dramatically at the ceiling. “You’re fucking kidding me!”

“Oh, just get up already. You know he wanted us to rush the toxicology report. He also wants me to start working on the tire tracks as soon as possible. It’s not like we won’t have anything to do today, might as well just get started early.”  
Brian just groans again, louder this time, banging his fists into his pillow.

He’s still in bed even after Jimmy’s already done getting washed up and is puttering around the room gathering his clothes. It’s kind of silly how comfortable they’ve gotten walking around in their underwear in the other’s company. The first morning, they still stumbled around awkwardly, changing in the tiny bathroom and hitting their elbows on the doorjamb, but that’s gone out the window. Jimmy’s in his boxers and his undershirt and seems perfectly comfortable. Funny, how quickly things like that normalize.

Brian watches him from where he’s curled himself up pitifully around his pillow. There’s a scar on the outside of Jimmy’s right thigh. It’s roundish, ugly, and from the looks of it, at least forty years old.  
“Where’d you get that?” He points.

“Fell off my bike when I was nine. Landed on a tree branch. It wasn’t pretty.”  
“Ouch.”  
“Yes. Now get out of bed before I dump a bucket of cold water on you.”

He would actually do it too, so Brian rolls out of bed and reluctantly gets dressed. It’s not an easy feat – everything he wore the day before still carries a lingering whiff of garbage, and it’s not like he’s packed his entire wardrobe in his overnight bag. He hangs the really offending items over the opened window, hoping that’ll air it out a little, but all in all this is not the greatest start to his day.

They pick up coffee and breakfast to go. Again the cherry pie - he doesn’t even need to say anything, Jimmy orders it for him at the drive through window without asking. It’s decidedly the worst he’s had so far, but then it came served in a cardboard container, so he wasn’t expecting much. Still, it's sweet, and warm, and the coffee is genuinely good and delightfully strong, and he's guzzled all of it down before they pull up to the morgue.

He doesn’t realize it’s the Fourth of July until he’s scribbling down the date on a test tube label. Well, fuck. So much for celebration.

They spend the entire day holed up in the lab. He imagines the festivities outside. Supposedly, there's a parade and even a motherfucking air show to enjoy. Not that he's necessarily desperate to attend either of those, but it would've been nice. 

There's a weird disconnect between all that going on outside and them sitting inside in the chilly morgue, looking at tire tracks and analyzing all the evidence they gathered at the two crime scenes with such precision that he thinks he might go cross-eyed. 

Luckily, as it turns out, their hard work is not without success. While he is in the middle of taking an intraocular fluid sample from one of the two victims - incidentally one of his favorite things to do, even if it's just for the delightful ick factor - Jimmy makes a noise something like a sharply inhaled ‘ha!’ He had been treating the victim’s baseball cap to bring out any prints, and apparently, found one.

“Partial thumb print! Not too clear so it may take some time, but it’s the best we’ve got so far.”  
“Are you sure it’s not the victim’s?”  
“Very sure. I checked twice. I can work with this. I really can.”

Lifting prints from fabric is a rare skill indeed, and Jimmy Price is one of the few capable of doing it. It’s a fairly new technique, developed in Scotland, that he remembers Jimmy raving about excitedly about two years ago. And for sure, there it is, right on the brim, brought out by extensive scientific research. Ha, indeed. Jimmy is positively glowing, which is oddly cute of him. 

“Jack’s going to kiss you for that.”  
“I think his wife might object.”  
“I think _I_ might object, now that I think about it.”

Jimmy just looks at him funny for that and Brian kind of wishes he hadn’t said it. Lines, crossing them, he really isn’t sure how this all works yet. He thinks of the decidedly awkward cartwheel last night wound up making and wonders if he's taken the whole thing further than Jimmy ever intended. 

"I'm going to see if I can bring it out more," Jimmy says, more or less talking over his remark, and that also leaves Brian more than a little uncomfortable. He feels like he's being turned down for something, and considering he doesn't even really know what he's being turned down for, it just makes him feel like crap.

"You get back to your eyeballs, okay?" Jimmy continues, giving him a little smile that tries to tell Brian they're fine, really, but he still slinks back to his autopsy table with the air of a kicked puppy. He's just not getting the proper hang of today, it seems, and he'd like a pat on the shoulder or some such, but nobody seems to want to give it to him.

He gets back to his eyeballs and his blood tests and his tissue samples. He has immense trouble keeping his focus though, and knows it’s entirely to blame on the bare few hours of sleep he managed to get. 

Brian likes his healthy eight hours of sleep, especially after draining days like yesterday. He’s not one of those people who can get by on two hours and a stale pretzel and be okay. He somehow managed to make it through medical school, but he still feels like he’s catching up on all the sleep he lost during that one, and not getting enough doesn’t make him a very happy man. 

He feels like he’s attempting to walk some kind of marathon on his gums. Maybe one of those survival runs with the mudslides and the rope swings, only he’s being chased by madmen with baseball bats screaming for his healthy, non-smoking lungs. 

By the time Jack shows up, Pendrell in his wake, it's the late afternoon. Brian hadn't even looked at the clock in a couple hours, too busy trying to keep his focus on his task and sulking, and is a little stunned at how quickly the day flew by. 

Pendrell looks like crap. This only feeds his little pet theory that Jack was up all night - it's entirely possible Jack kept Pendrell up with him, going over witness reports and Lord knows what else. Jack just looks pissy, which seems to be something of a default for him. 

He’s pretty pleased with the partial thumbprint, though. Jimmy will be busy with that for the rest of the day, mostly weeding through false positives and hurling complicated insults at his computer screen, but at least it’s something concrete to work with. 

The rest of meeting is so predictable that Brian could spit. They share their results, they wind up with nothing, they just about fail to interpret the evidence, and Brian zones out wondering if Jurassic Park 3 will be on TV this week as well. 

A loud _bang_ drags him back to reality. He starts, jumps, damn near pees himself. Jack has slammed his hand down flat on a table top and is looking at him with the kind of intensity that makes Brian want to roll over and show him his belly.  
“Are we boring you, Mr. Zeller?” he roars, articulating each word carefully. Yeah, definitely peeing himself. Oh, God.

“What? No. Sorry, what?” he stammers. Jimmy is watching him with a kind of anxious sympathy, as if he’s already started planning his funeral but at least feels sorry about it. 

“There are five dead men in your freezer, and you’re standing here daydreaming about sunshine and daisies?!” Jack thunders on.  
 _Dinosaurs, actually_ , he almost says, but probably saves his own life by swallowing the words. “Sorry,” is what he actually says. “You have my full attention. I’m just tired.”

“Just tired. The case interfering with your naptime?”  
Yes, that’s pretty much how it is, and Brian doesn’t quite feel like pretending it’s not. He thinks it would probably be best to say nothing, other than those ‘please-and-thank-you’s he’d sworn himself to the day before.

But Brian being Brian, Brian being tired, Brian being what he supposes amounts to a colossal jackass, he does exactly none of those.

“We were up until the dead of night doing the research for you, and you had us up before seven again this morning to continue. So yes, I am _just_ tired.”  
Jimmy closes his eyes and lets out a little sigh. He’s given up on him, then. Well, fine. 

“Perhaps if you toned down the attitude you’d have enough energy left over to solve the case!” Jack snaps. “I’m getting mighty tired of you, Zeller. This case is tough enough to crack without your constant commentary!”  
"We're doing the best we can! It's not like we're happy to be stuck in here all day while dead people keep streaming in through the door! Jimmy found a print, didn’t he?”

Jimmy’s hands go up, making a wordless plea to kindly leave him out of this, but Jack doesn’t really notice nor does he actually seem to care. He’s standing there, towering over Brian – and Brian is no small man, so this is impressive – and looks like he’s trying to decide which of Brian’s bones he’ll break first. Brian almost hopes he’ll go for the neck and get it over with.

“We’re working as hard as possible, but my battery is running out. Sorry. Only human. Inconvenient, I know,” Brian throws out in a rushed ramble. 

Jack just gives him a long, hard look, the muscles in his jaw working as if he’s chewing on something rubbery and probably not very tasty. “Fine,” he spits. 

Brian didn’t see that coming.

“Go. Get gone already. If you have nothing keeping you here right now, get back to your motel, get some sleep, and get back when you’re able to solve this damn case.” Jack looks angry, but for some odd reason this anger doesn’t appear to have all that much to do with Brian himself. 

He wonders. He wonders what Jack is thinking, but it comes at him with an almost violent clarity, like getting smacked right in the face with a marble tablet with Will Graham’s name written across it.

Last time Jack pushed one of the people working for him, they wound up in a hospital for the criminally insane. Something like an apology bubbles up between his lips, an insistence it’s not _that_ bad, honestly, but he thinks that this truly is the best time to just shut up and nut up and do as Jack says.

Jack’s phone beeps. He fishes it out his pocket, looks at the number on the screen, and his face goes weirdly unreadable for a split second. He looks up, points a dangerous finger Brian. “You better not be here when I get back,” he says and walks into the hallway while he answers his phone.

The air in the morgue feels weirder than one would expect. Pendrell is looking at him with something that borders precariously between disapproving and sympathetic, and Brian distinctly wants neither of them.

"Still suicidal?" Jimmy asks with a quirk of his eyebrows, standing with his arms crossed.  
"Just don't, Jimmy, okay. Just leave it,” he says. “I’ll see you later, okay.”

He shrugs off the lab coat, grabs his bag, and leaves without as much as looking at Jimmy. He spots Jack in the hallway, speaking in hushed, private tones on his phone. A personal call, not work-related, Brian would say. His wife, maybe? He ponders the possibilities, but thinks he’d rather just simply not know.

He picks up a great, big, greasy burger and a cherry milkshake on his way. He doesn’t remember ever actually having had a cherry milkshake before, but it's sweet and thick and he enjoys it thoroughly. He's finished the burger before he winds up at their stupid cabin, shoving it in his face in greedy bites, and sits down on a plastic chair outside their door. 

He finishes his milkshake and watches as the sun begins set, the sky slowly going pink through the trees. It’s still unbelievably lovely, crickets all chirping, birds twittering, and he thinks it ought to make him feel better but it doesn’t. 

He takes a long, uncomfortable shower and putters around the cabin for a bit afterwards, folding up the clothes he hung up to air that morning. It didn’t really do much, a vague ripeness still clings to his shirt, but he supposes it’s the best he can manage here.

For a moment, he yearns for home, the comfort of his own bathroom, clean clothes or at the very least the laundry room in his apartment building. He sits on the bed in his boxers, t-shirt in hand, and tries to empty his mind. 

He doesn’t manage so well. He yanks the t-shirt over his head, flops down across the bed and watches infomercials for a while. Some pumped up guy tries to sell him a magic device that will give him abs in about twenty minutes. 

Brian already has abs, thank you very much, even if he had to work out a little longer than twenty minutes to get them. It’s still entertaining to watch though, for the sheer stupidity of it all, and the TV offers him a kind of white noise to fill the otherwise empty cabin with.

Jimmy’s absence more or less smacks him across the face, a sudden realization that the reason the cabin feels empty is because he’s the only one in it, and he gets a little distracted pondering how eerily fast he adjusted to sharing this space with him. It’s a weird conclusion to draw. 

He turns the television off, chucks the remote control across the room with a little more irritation than the poor thing probably deserves, and burrows into bed.

He starts off on his own side, but sidles right on over to Jimmy’s within minutes. It’s both a conscious decision and not, and he lies there in the not-quite-dark, rolled up burrito-style in the thin white sheets, and presses his face into Jimmy’s pillow.

It smells clean, inoffensive, but if he inhales deeply he can still catch something more, a hint of that generic shower gel for men, something more personal. He doesn’t know if it’s Jimmy’s scent. He’s never actually been close enough to Jimmy to smell him, after all, but lying there barely managing to breathe for having his face pressed into the pillow so tightly, he knows he wants to. 

He rolls onto his back, coughs into the room, and rolls onto his side. He’s still there, ever so stubbornly trying to just fall asleep already, when Jimmy comes in. He wonders how he got there without a car, but is too busy aggressively trying to fall asleep to ask.

Jimmy doesn’t turn the lights on and moves around quietly, changing into his sleepwear and washing up with such care that he thinks Jimmy has assumed he’s asleep already. He leaves it like that and doesn’t move a muscle, not even when Jimmy eventually gets into bed with him – on Brian’s side, this time.

His assumption proves false, however. Jimmy is quiet for exactly seven minutes – he watches them trickle by on the digital clock on the TV – but then he speaks, out loud, making it clear he’s been well aware of Brian being bright awake the whole time. “You’re hogging the sheets.”

“Yup.”  
“You’re also on my side.”  
“Yup, again.”  
“Okay. I’d still like a bit of sheet.”

Brian doesn’t move, and Jimmy sighs. “You are such an asshole sometimes.”

“It’s what everyone keeps expecting me to be, isn’t it?” He’s aware of this honking flaw of his. He doesn't think he does it on purpose but knows he can genuinely be a great, big bag of dicks on occasion. He was a truly epic one today, too. That much is true, but he doesn’t feel like taking any kind of responsibility for that at all. 

“Doesn’t mean you have to try your best to constantly live up to it,” Jimmy says.  
Brian grudgingly rolls over for that, wriggling free from the sheets just enough for Jimmy to be able to grab a corner and yank. It’s not a very considerate solution, but Brian doesn’t feel like being very considerate anyway. 

“So today was fun, wasn’t it?” Jimmy states loudly with fake cheer into the room, and Brian sighs deeply.  
“I do not like this case. At all. Nothing about this case is in any way okay.”  
“Doesn’t necessarily mean you need to take that out on Jack, though. Worst thing to do in any scenario.”

"I can’t argue with that. Look, I say stupid shit sometimes."  
"That you do. Me, too, though, but I try to take care who I say it to."  
"I said stupid shit to you today."  
"I'm sure you did. Which specific stupid shit are you referring to?"

Oh, great. Now he's going to have to specify. "About Jack kissing you for finding that thumb print. That I might object to that."  
"Ah. Right. That."

"You kind of shot me down there. So _that_ stung."  
"I didn't!"  
"You did! You didn't?"  
"I don't think I did. I may have been a little distracted, I was really sort of happy with the thumb print. What the hell did you mean by that, anyway?"

"I think I meant... ugh. Okay. I'm going to stop talking around things, how's that?"  
"I'm a little scared." He can actually hear the smirk on Jimmy’s face. He’s not sure whether he wants to kiss him or kick him for that, but the general mood the past few days seems to have him leaning towards ‘kiss’ which, of some reason, just annoys him.

"I was joking around. I was! The way you and I always do? We spar. I like that we spar. It makes me happy that we spar. The sparring improves otherwise really sucky days. I want to keep sparring."  
"The word ‘spar’ has lost all meaning. Please repeat it a couple times more."  
"But-“ 

"I was waiting for that but."  
"Jesus Jimmy, just because I like the sparring doesn't mean you need to do it right this moment."

Jimmy laughs and Brian ponders kicking him anyway. Right in the shins. Hard.

"Okay. Right. But, but but but." Brian sighs. "Just because I’m joking around, doesn't mean there isn’t like... a certain truth at its core."

"I think you're still talking around things, actually."  
"Yeah?"  
"You kind of lost me, is all. You’re not the only one who’s tired."

He considers grabbing a notepad and writing it down. Bold letters, all caps, ‘I THINK YOU’RE GREAT! PLEASE WANT ME,’ and then hitting Jimmy over the head with it. No notepad presents itself, though, and they’re in the not-quite-dark, and he might just as well spit it out. "I think I really would object to Jack kissing you."

"You do realize _I_ would object to that too, right? I mean, that would be sort of creepy."  
"This really isn't about Jack, by definition."  
"I'm lost again."

"Oh, fine. I'm stupidly attracted to you. For real. And I would get genuinely jealous if anyone else at all would get to kiss you." He accompanies his words with a somewhat helpless gesture at the ceiling, as if he’s tossing an imaginary wad of paper. From the imaginary notepad, with the words ‘I AM AN IDIOT’ scribbled on the inside.

Jimmy is quiet for a while, and Brian considers maybe throwing himself headfirst out the window. Fall to the floor, roll over, bolt off in the direction of the woods, and live off the land for the rest of his life. Then the bed starts to quite subtly shake, and he realizes the bastard is fucking _laughing_.

"Stupidly attracted! Who talks like that!" Jimmy titters.  
"Well, sorry that my choice of words can't appease you."  
Jimmy covers his face with both hands but doesn’t actually stop laughing. Brian groans with some theatrical flair, rolling his eyes.

"Look, we ended on kind of an awkward note yesterday,” he continues. “And then I made that worse somehow today, and I didn't get enough sleep, and I hate this case, and I hate this cabin, and then Jack started nagging me too and I just. I don't want _us_ to get complicated, too. So stop laughing at me. I have no idea what I'm doing, anyway."

“No, you really don’t, do you. You massively helpless lump,” Jimmy says fondly as the last of his laughter settles. “But let’s see. You would get jealous if anyone would kiss me.”  
“You don’t need to repeat my words back to me. We’re not Teletubbies.”

“Speak for yourself. And I am not repeating them back to _you_. I’m repeating them back to _me_.”  
“Right.”  
“So, you would get jealous if anyone kissed me. Thus implying you want to kiss me?”

Well, there they are, ending up where Brian had hoped they would without him having to explicitly spell it out after all. “I don’t even know how to respond to that without sounding like a cliché right out of a crappy romcom. Probably one of those syrupy ones with Meg Ryan. Aren’t we a little old for this conversation?”  
“Oh, I know I am. I just don’t know what’ll happen when we stop having it.”

Brian knows. Jimmy knows, too. He sees it on the contours of his face when they both turn to look at each other. It’s like a switch is flipped, a cosmic button pressed somewhere that sucks all the air out of the room and replaces it with something else, cutting their breaths off for a split second and boiling the entire universe down to nothing but the 35 square feet of their queen-sized bed. 

It’s hard to say who makes the first move. It could’ve been Brian. It could’ve been Jimmy. They could each blame the other and not be wrong, or they could each choose to stick with their pride and claim they were the one who started it, but in the end it doesn’t matter. They collide into each other, stumbling into a kiss that feels so par-the-course it’s ridiculous, and every last exhausted thought in Brian’s head fizzles into a dulled static.

It’s weirdly familiar for something that’s entirely not, just warm skin and slick mouths in the not-quite-dark. Jimmy pushes his hands up under his shirt, palms flat across the sides of Brian’s ribcage, and Brian yanks his t-shirt over his head in one clumsy movement that almost ends up with him banging his elbow into the top of Jimmy’s head. 

Jimmy follows suit, his shirt flying across the room in the same direction Brian’s went, and there’s a brief, chaotic moment where they manage to wriggle out of their boxers without actually breaking the kiss. 

Had Brian been capable of coherent thought, that would have puzzled him. He would have been a little gob-smacked by being suddenly naked with Jimmy Price, a little shocked by the feeling Jimmy’s dick, full and hard, pressed against his hip. He would have been more shocked by his own arousal, overwhelming and heavy and coming on with the kind of unmitigated, ungainly speed he hasn’t experienced since his college days. 

As it is, he thinks none of these things. He simply gives into this weirdly primal response to thrust up against Jimmy, who’s rolled on top of him and is sucking on his lips like his life depends on it. He’s not thinking about what’s happening, and he’s not thinking about the case, he’s not thinking about getting into stupid arguments with Jack Crawford, and he’s certainly not thinking about Will Graham or dead girls or whether he fed Abigail Hobbs to his dogs. 

He thinks nothing, except perhaps a hazy _finally_ that drifts around between his ears in mellow, little circles. One of his thighs is between Jimmy’s, one arm around his waist, one hand on the back of Jimmy’s head holding him into a kiss he’s doing his very best to just flat-out drown in, and their dicks slide together so beautifully that it’s almost as if their bodies were made for this. 

They find a rhythm, something that goes back and forth between desperate and languid, and the sensation of it is so physical and so intimate that it makes Brian feel like his entire soul is on fire. He’s wanted this very badly, far more so than he’d actually realized, and he has no idea what to do with himself now he’s getting it. He keens into Jimmy’s mouth, fingers dragging down the skin of his back with enough force to leave long, red marks, and climaxes across his abdomen. 

He has one clear thought, presented to him as Jimmy groans loudly, presses his face into his collarbone and orgasms too while, with some theatrical irony, somewhere in the distance, the fireworks show begins. _’Oh, it’s ten PM.’_ It matters nothing but he thinks it anyway, while Jimmy pants into his neck and Brian holds onto him and doesn’t want to let go. 

Jimmy does make him let go, albeit briefly. He retrieves a towel from the bathroom, wordlessly wipes the both of them clean, and crawls right back on top of Brian and kisses him again as if to say that this isn’t over yet. Brian wonders what this is the beginning of, though, and he wonders for just how long exactly this has been bound to happen between the two of them. 

They fall asleep closely entwined, pressed together in the stuffy atmosphere of their cabin. Brian wakes up once in the course of the night, his arm fast asleep under Jimmy’s shoulder. He shimmies it out from underneath him but doesn’t break the embrace until morning.


	5. Chapter 5

Brian wakes up first. Jimmy is curled up under his arm, his face pressed into the side of his chest, and Brian marvels at that for a moment. He's making soft sounds, not quite snoring but close enough, and feels warm and pleasant pressed up against him all naked. It's early still, only just about six thirty, and Brian contemplates going back to sleep for a while.

He doesn't. He lies there, listening to the sounds Jimmy makes. He realizes after a little while that he can feel his heart beat against his bare skin, and grows ever so slowly aroused by consequence of proximity and intimacy and the memory of the night before. After about twenty minutes, he very carefully disentangles them, not waking Jimmy up, leaving him wrapped in the sheets and murmuring into the pillow.

He takes a shower, washing himself clean and trying his very best to not overthink things, despite the shower not being the best place to not try and think about stuff. He gets out the shower, dries himself off, puts his boxers and his t-shirt on, all without actively confronting the fact that he had had sex with Jimmy last night. He brushes his teeth without thinking about how nice it was to wake up with him so close, and lathers about a gallon of gel into his hair without even coming close to ruminating on what this is all going to mean in the long run.

He just goes about his business, singing ‘the wheels on the bus go round and round’ in his head, but that bus crashes in a messy explosion of fire and screaming school kids when he steps out the bathroom and right into Jimmy, who is standing by the bed stark naked and looking oddly skittish.

They say nothing. They look at each other for what Brian estimates to be a year or two, trying to figure out what the best course of action is going to be and coming up short.

Well, Brian comes up short. Jimmy seems to figure out a satisfying conclusion. Tentatively, one of the corners of his mouth quirks up, and he steps closer. It’s not a big step. The room is seriously small, they’re already standing close, so it’s really more of a shuffle and he’s right there, looking up at Brian.

He reaches up, still not saying anything, and lightly trails his fingers up Brian’s chest. His fingertips catch on the worn cotton of his t-shirt and he’s just touching, as if he’s lightly mapping the shape and feel of Brian’s torso. Their eye contact breaks for just a moment, Jimmy’s eyes flickering to his fingers, and Brian realizes he’s been holding his breath and comes to the startling conclusion that this is, weirdly enough, the most intimate situation he’s ever been in.

It’s like Jimmy knows he now has permission to touch him, to touch him a lot, and is going to do so extensively. Brian exhales, feels like the room is tilting forwards, and he goes with it, wrapping an arm around Jimmy’s middle and pulling him in for a kiss entirely too overwhelming for the time of day.

Jimmy’s arms go around his neck, and he presses close, licking his way into Brian’s mouth. It’s a lazy kiss, a hello-good-morning, only wet and open-mouthed. Jimmy tastes like peppermint and Brian can only marvel at that, until it hits him the bastard probably snuck a breath mint while he was in the bathroom and had thus been actually planning this kiss since before Brian stepped into the room. 

This says a lot about Jimmy’s moxy, actually, and even more about his confidence. Brian approves, and not just because Jimmy genuinely is good enough a kisser to warrant a high opinion of himself on that matter.

The alarm on Jimmy’s phone begins to blare, and they both jump. Jimmy laughs against his lips, which Brian thinks is just delightful, before turning away to turn it off.  
“Awake and up before the alarm goes off. Showered already, even. That full night’s sleep really did do wonders for you.”  
“Oh yeah, fresh as a daisy.” The sex probably helped. Real spirit lifter, that.

Jimmy wipes his thumb across the screen, checking for messages, and satisfied he has none he places his phone back on his bedside table. “Just so you know, we’re not going to be a cliché and not talk about this. We are going to talk about this, and we are going to talk about it a lot.”  
“You’re _really_ naked.”  
Jimmy laughs. “Didn’t bother you last night.”

“It’s not bothering me now. I just thought I’d point it out. Because you really are _really_ naked.” And Brian is _really_ aroused, visibly so in his nice black boxer shorts, but he chooses to ignore it and, apparently, so does Jimmy.   
“I’m putting my clothes on. Don’t worry. Just want a quick shower first.” 

He looks at him, that thing where their eyes meet and all the air spontaneously abandons the room happens, and they’re kissing again. Jimmy’s hand are on the back of his neck, Brian’s hands are more or less everywhere, and he considers all sorts of things he might do but knows they don’t really have the time for any of them.

“This is not getting dressed and taking a shower,” Jimmy mumbles.  
“Really isn’t. This isn’t even close. This is just going to make us late and cut into our breakfast time.”  
It takes only seconds, an inhale, an exhale, and they’re kissing once more. Brian thinks it might be the nudity. It’s surprisingly difficult to keep his hands off it, at least.

They manage to end the kiss without having to resort to using a crowbar to pry themselves away from each other. Jimmy goes to take his shower, Brian finishes getting dressed, makes the bed and totters about the room aimlessly. 

Jimmy emerges from the bathroom smelling of his shower gel, his shaving cream, and his deodorant, and Brian only allows him to get halfway dressed before dragging him into another kiss that nearly ends with the both of them just chucking their clothes again and diving back into bed. 

It’s only on virtue of their overwhelming sense of responsibility that they don’t. They tidy their clothes, regain their composure, and set off towards the parking lot. Stepping outside is a bit of an odd experience, as if Brian completely sheds their little world of intimacy and raging hormones and fits himself into this professional persona who totally would not make out with a coworker ever. 

Whatever it is they have going now, it belongs entirely within the privacy of their blue and white little cabin. If Mr. Sanderson, the vaguely sadistic motel manager, only knew what they got up to in there. 

Brian is still met with the distinct urge to reach out and take Jimmy’s hand, which he knows would be about the dumbest thing to do. He sticks his hands in his pockets and keeps a respectful yet friendly distance from Jimmy, who’s walking around with the biggest grin on his face. He wonders if he should say something – Jimmy’s whole manner couldn’t more obviously spell out ‘I had a bunch of sex last night’ even if he’d decided to wear one of those big sandwich boards around his neck. 

As they stroll onto the parking lot, a faded gray van in need of a paintjob pulls up by the side of the road. Jonah jumps out, hoisting a backpack onto his shoulder and waving as the van drives off again. He spots Brian as he starts up the lane and grins widely, waving at him.

“Good morning! That your dad dropping you off?” Brian says.  
“Yeah. The chain broke off my bike yesterday. Did you have a nice Fourth of July, sir?”

Brian grins despite himself. “Actually, yes. Yes I did.” Not for any reasons that he can tell the kid, but that doesn’t change the fact that his otherwise frustrating Independence Day took a nice turn somewhere around ten last night. “How’s your mom doing?”

Jonah fidgets with the strap of his bag, scuffing the toe of one of his sneakers across the asphalt and sneaking a somewhat anxious glance up the road, in the direction his father had just driven off. “In the hospital. It’s so hot outside and all, it’s difficult for her.” 

“Sorry to hear that. Are you okay?”   
Jonah shrugged, avoiding his eyes.   
“And your dad?”

Jonah twitches at that, casting another glance down the road as if he half-expects his dad to come driving back up to kick his ass for talking about him. “He’s not. Well. He’s a little lost inside his own head, I suppose.”  
And right back to the awkward. Brian honestly doesn’t know what to say to that – he’s not the kind of guy who gives heartwarming pep talks to struggling teens. 

“Are you close to finding the killer yet?” Jonah asks, and Brian has never been so happy with a change of subject.  
“We’re working hard on our investigation,” he says, giving him the standard answer usually used to shut up the press. The kid glances down the road again, and Brian can only wonder what the hell he’s looking for. He glances the other way himself, and sees Jimmy standing impatiently by their car.

“I gotta go. You take care, okay?” He offers the kid the most sympathetic smile he can muster, and Jonah nods.  
“I will. Have a nice day, sir.” And up the lane he goes as Brian turns and half-jogs to their car where Jimmy is leaning on the open door and raising an eyebrow at him.

“Bonding with the locals?”  
“He’s a nice kid. His mom’s in the hospital.”  
“Ah. Good Samaritan, you.”  
“Oh, shut up.”

Jimmy grins at him and they get into the car. They’re quiet during the ride, enjoying the early morning sun that is still shining pleasantly and not threatening to smother them, and pick out a little coffee place for their breakfast that morning. Their cherry pie comes with a topping of oatmeal crumble, which Brian thinks is just wonderful. Jimmy orders French toast and eyes Brian’s plate with some distrust.

“You do know that cherry pie for breakfast is a little eccentric, right? Especially four mornings in a row.”  
“Consider it an experiment,” Brian says around a mouthful. “A way to immerse myself in the local culture.”  
“I’m considering it a perfect illustration of your crazy sweet tooth. Four mornings in a row, Brian.”

Brian grins at him, sure he’s still got some cherry stuck between his teeth. Jimmy simply shakes his head with this private, little smile ghosting across his face that thrills Brian to no end and returns his attention to his toast.

“So you said we were going to, ah, talk about this a lot,” Brian begins. He sips his coffee, looks at Jimmy over the edge of his mug.  
“I did say that, didn’t I?”  
“You certainly did.” He takes a bite of pie, chews, swallows, thinks very hard and comes up short. 

“So. We had sex.”  
Jimmy chortles across his plate. “Yes, we did.”

Brian grins, eats his pie, drinks his coffee, and watches as the silence blows across the table like a particularly confused tumbleweed. “I don’t know what else to say about that. I think I kind of already had my say last night. You know, before things got all naked and sweaty.”

“I have to give you that. You put yourself out there already, didn’t you? I suppose the first matter I’d like to have addressed is if it’s going to happen again.”  
“I’d be down with that. I mean, if you are.”  
Jimmy chuckles, wrapping both hands around his coffee mug. “I think we’ve already established that I am very enthusiastic about the idea.”

Brian smirks at him, finishing the last of his pie. This is good. A little different, but good. He supposes he can’t let all of this happen unspoken, not with Jimmy. They work together, they’ve known each other for years. They are simply going to need to put their cards on the table. 

“Although I am… well… you know.” Jimmy wipes his mouth with a paper napkin, crumples it up, and leaves it on his empty plate.  
“I have no idea.”  
“A lot older than you.”

Brian snorts out a laugh. Now there’s something he hadn’t actually expected Jimmy to touch upon, even if it’s just because it’s simply not bobbing about his horizon at all. Yes, Jimmy is older than him, and Brian thinks that if Jimmy’s gender is no issue to him, he sees no reason at all why his age would be.   
“Really? Never noticed that before. You’re so youthful,” he quips.

“I was already allowed to vote when you were born. That’s kind of a vast gap, isn’t it?”  
“Is that an issue for you?”   
“No, not an _issue_ , I just think it’s something we might want to acknowledge.”

Brian sighs, and sips his coffee. “Jimmy, I seriously do not care about how old you are. Just feel good about snagging yourself a younger guy or something.”  
“I _snagged_ you?”  
“In a nutshell.”  
“I’d hate to say it, but I think _you_ snagged _me_.”

Brian laughs at that while the waitress, a skinny woman of about forty who looks like she’s counting down the minutes to her next cigarette break, refills their coffee. 

"I did know you liked me, though. I think. Well I didn't _know_ , but I kind of hoped? Though I was gunning for just ‘attracted to’ without any further adverbial amplification, even if I truly do appreciate the 'stupidly,'” Jimmy continues once she’s left.   
"I'm going to throw my pie at you in a minute."

"I probably deserve that." He pours more sugar into his coffee than anyone has ever needed. Brian considers Jimmy’s earlier remarks about Brian’s sweet tooth and files this away for future teasing reference. 

Jimmy stirs his coffee and sits there, at ease with the universe at that moment, morning sunlight falling through the window across their table just about lighting up his hair, his eyes, and Brian’s stomach erupts with butterflies. 

Endorphins, he knows, endogenous opioid peptides, he could draw out the chemical structure from memory on a napkin right now if he had to, but science and romance are odd things to connect and he prefers to focus on the causation rather than how his pituitary gland chooses to respond to it.

"Hey, Jimmy?"  
"Yes?"

"I'm really into you."  
"I'm really into you, too."  
"Good. Great. Glad we cleared that up."   
They raise their coffee mugs, big yellow things with a white stripe on them, and clink them together over the table with a shared grin. 

It’s as if Brian didn’t let himself classify this until it became a reality, has not allowed himself to face that, yes, he has feelings for this dork until he got to wake up with said dork snoring into his armpit. He’s there, now, and it’s not a bad place to be.

He almost forgets they’re there for a case, and doesn’t quite come down from his stupidly pink little cloud until they’re walking up to the morgue where Ellis stands outside smoking a cigarette and looking at them as if they’re walking up to sell her a dated set of encyclopedias. They offer her a cheerful greeting and walk giggling down the hallway like a couple of kids.

Jimmy is not done working on the print. He goes right back to it, shrugging on his lab coat and more or less disappearing into his little corner. Brian finds his toxicology report waiting for him on the table and busies himself analyzing the results.

He doesn’t notice Jack has showed up until a mountainous shadow falls over his workspace, and he looks up into the face of a man who’s about ready to eat him for breakfast.   
“Uh, morning,” Brian says.  
“Tell me you had the greatest night’s sleep of your life and are not going to pull what you did yesterday,” Jack demands. 

_I slept the deep sleep of the well-sexed, thank you for asking_ , Brian thinks. He sees Jimmy, sitting behind Jack, smirking in a way which suggests he’s thinking the exact same thing. Brian could _sing_.   
“Yes,” is what he says. “I did. And I won’t. I owe you an apology.”

“Damn right you do. You are going to stop pulling that crap, do you hear me?”  
“Yes. Yes, I hear you.” He closes his eyes for a moment, sighs, and thinks that hey, maybe he should just talk to Jack like a human being for once. “I feel like crap for acting like I did. The case got to me, I know I shouldn’t let it. I’m sorry.”

Jack nods, observing him with an air of something that suggests he’s committing this to memory for some reason. Brian wonders if he’s going to whip out a voice recorder, so he’ll have something that might hold up in a court case in case Brian decides to snap and eat a teenage girl after all. 

“I need you on board with this, okay?” Jack says. “I don’t request your assistance on a case because of your charming personality. I do it because you’re a skilled professional whose contribution can make a difference. So contribute. Solve the case. Don’t make me regret my decisions.” 

And with that, he actually turns and leaves, all authority and broad shoulders in a nice suit. It certainly does something for the dramatic effect of his words, and Brian stares and struggles to make sense of what the hell just happened.

“Did Jack Crawford just compliment me?”  
“In a roundabout, vaguely insulting sort of way, yes, I think he did,” Jimmy says.  
“I feel all tingly.”  
Jimmy laughs, and Brian taps both hands on the table top and tries not to giggle too loudly.

Brian eventually has to conclude that Jack did genuinely leave the room solely for dramatic effect, as he returns within twenty minutes. He sits with Jimmy and discusses the print with him, while Brian works on the toxicology report and feels special. It’s all weirdly peaceful, until Jack’s phone rings.

“Crime scene. Victim number six. Let’s go,” he says tersely. 

Six in under a week, then. It leaves a persistent, sour taste in Brian’s mouth which has nothing to do with his cherry pie breakfast and which is still there even when they are standing under an overpass, shielding their eyes from the sun and watching Pendrell instruct the police force to direct traffic away from the scene.

“It’s a woman. That’s new,” Jimmy says, snapping his gloves on and crouching besides the body.

“We got an ID for this one. One of the police officers recognized her. Her name is Sue Rueser. He mostly knew her from nights spent in the drunk tank. She’d been homeless for a while, but spent the majority of her nights in the local shelter.” 

Pendrell had jogged up to them and relays the info he’d gathered, slightly out of breath. He’s just so darn happy to contribute, Brian has to stop himself from giving him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. He crouches down next to Jimmy, carefully turning the victim’s head.

“Yep, back of the skull bashed in. He’s liking his baseball bat, alright,” he says. “Great gaping hole in the chest, no lungs. No indication that he killed her here, and I highly doubt this was the spot he abducted her from in the first place.”  
“Just the dumping ground, then,” Jack concludes. “And a good one, too. Not a very busy road, so he could’ve just stopped the van, kicked her out, and drove off.”

“A better place to leave the bodies than alleys in the city itself,” Pendrell says. “Which is worrying. He’s evolving quickly, learning the rules of this game.”

“Not learning how to properly get the lungs out, though. I’m missing at least two ribs, too. Just snapped them right off in his struggle to get to the lungs. I am telling you, he’s not doing this meticulously. It’s almost like he goes into a rage and is just sort of... ripping them out like an animal,” Brian says, inspecting the chest cavity. 

“Charming fellow, really,” Jimmy quips. “Sensitive soul.”  
“Why consistently the homeless people, though?”

“Maybe he thinks they don’t count,” Pendrell says. Brian frowns at him. “The homeless are like an invisible presence on the streets,” Pendrell clarifies. “Nameless, faceless. People walk past them but don’t see them. Maybe the killer picks them because it’s like they don’t count, because to him they’re not... real people.” 

Brian looks at the dead woman at his feet, at her graying hair, at an old burn scar on one of her arms, her lifeless face, and thinks about this. Would he have noticed her if he’d passed her on the streets a week ago? He’d be lying to himself if he said he did. It’s not a nice conclusion to come to about himself and about the world around him, and he struggles with it for a moment while he checks her arms and hands for any defensive wounds. 

They finish pecking the crime scene clean like a wake of vultures. Jack and Pendrell head to the Sheriff’s Department to look at Sue Reuser’s criminal record, while Jimmy and Brian follow the coroner back to the morgue. Another day, another autopsy, and Brian has now seen enough lungless chest cavities to last him this lifetime as well as at least the next two. 

“She was sick,” Brian says, holding her stomach in his hands. “Stomach cancer. Pretty advanced, too. She must’ve been in a lot of pain.”  
Jimmy nods, writes it down on the autopsy report. “Think the killer knew?”  
“I think the killer barely knows what a stomach _is_.”

He finishes the autopsy, and wheels poor Sue Reuser into the freezer to sit and wait quietly with the other victims. His phone buzzes on the desk, right on cue, and he peels his gloves off, wads them up and tosses them in the bin before he retrieves it.

‘How’s the Michigan case? Any progress?’ 

Oh, Bev. Brian can’t even begin to comprehend why the hell she’d even be thinking about that while roaming around sunny Italy.

‘Just finished autopsy on victim six. What’re you texting me for? Go eat some ice cream or something.’  
‘Love you too. Six victims already? Damn. And the Zeller’n’Price loveshack, going well too?’   
‘The shack is a-rocking, don’t come a-knocking. Hope to break the case soon. Now GO DO ITALY STUFF.’

If only she knew that he wasn’t even kidding. He wonders if they’ll clue her in when she comes back. He wonders if there will be something to clue her into at all by then, which makes him feel a little nervous. 

He’s in the middle of typing up their autopsy notes and not thinking about his romantic future when Jimmy pops up next to him, all but waving his watch in front of Brian’s face.

“Want to go have an early dinner break?”  
It’s only a little past five, but Brian supposes he could eat. “Sure. Wanna go get some take out or something?”  
“I thought we could maybe go back to the cabin for a while.”

“Bring food there? I don’t know, I think maybe eating somewhere would be –“  
“Brian.” Jimmy’s tone of voice makes him look up, and he’s looking so shockingly stern Brian isn’t sure whether to be frightened or aroused. “I thought we might go back to the cabin. For a while. For _dinner_.”

Brian feels monumentally dumb for about a second or two, then his hormones kick in, and he thinks that might just be the best idea anyone has ever had in a wonderful history of great, somewhat naughty ideas. 

“Jack would kill us,” he says with a grin he just can’t contain.  
“What, you plan on _telling_ him?”  
“Fair point. Sounds like a plan.”

His stomach a veritable tornado of those earlier butterflies, his legs so wobbly they might just as well be jell-o, they thunder on down the empty hallway and pile into the car. Jimmy lets him drive, which might be about the most irresponsible thing he’s ever done, as most of Brian’s blood has already abandoned his brain for more hopeful pastures. 

They’re barely through the door and already undressing themselves, like a couple of teenagers, throwing their clothes everywhere. They are on the clock, Brian supposes, but they’re probably also just incredibly antsy and have been since this morning.

It’s decidedly different from the night before. It’s not dark yet, for one, meaning he can actually see stuff now like how Jimmy’s pupils dilate and his skin flushes red. There is still an urgency to their actions but a different one from the night before. Less of an emotional drive, a search for some kind of catharsis, and more two grown men unable to keep their hands off each other. 

Jimmy pushes him back onto the bed, kissing him with far more tongue than strictly necessarily, and all but slithers on down his body. Brian bites on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from making a bad dinner-related joke, mostly because he thinks it might actually discourage Jimmy from his plans and Brian isn’t stupid enough to allow that to happen. 

Jimmy kisses his prick, presses his lips to the head with an odd touch of affection before he slides it into his mouth. Brian lets out a giggle that tapers off into an embarrassingly squeaky moan. He lets his legs fall apart, and Jimmy settles in with his shoulders under Brian’s knees and sets off to give Brian what he thinks might be the mother of all blowjobs. 

Brian doesn’t really know what to do with his hands. Instinct tells him to put at least one of them on the back of Jimmy’s head, but then that’s a little rude, and Jimmy’s doing fine without encouragement. He winds up grabbing hold of his pillow, his hands by the sides of his head, and actively reminds himself to breathe.

“Jesus, Jimmy,” he says, and he can actually _feel_ the bastard smile around his dick. Jimmy bobs his head, licks up and down his length, uses his hands and his tongue and displays such skill that Brian thinks he could write a dissertation about it. A lengthy one. With graphs in it.

“Jimmy,” he says with a gasp. “Could you. Would you. Uh, please.”  
“What?” Jimmy says. His voice is hardly more than a hoarse whisper, and it’s so nice brushing past his cock Brian almost forgets what he was going to say. 

Almost, though. Not quite. “Finger me?” Awkward thing to ask, but he’s very far past caring. He just _wants_ , and Jimmy is quiet for only a moment before he swears appreciatively and obeys without question. 

He’s a bit more careful at first than Brian thinks necessary but seems to quickly pick up on the fact that this isn’t the first time Brian has done this, and it all sort of melts into a beautiful jumble of sensation and pleasure. This is perfect, and Brian is tugging on the pillow under his head so hard he thinks he might just up and rip it.

“My kingdom for a condom and some lube,” Jimmy mutters, two spit-slick fingers up Brian’s ass and his lips dragging across the head of Brian’s dick as he speaks, and Brian makes a sound he thinks he originally intended to be a laugh but which comes out sounding a little deranged.  
“Oh God, agreed. We’re buying those. We’re so buying those.” He’s babbling, but Jimmy’s doing wonderful things to him, so that’s to be expected. 

He orgasms with an embarrassing amount of noise, arching his back off the bed. Jimmy coaxes him through it, then lets him slowly drift back to Earth, sitting up and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Brian doesn’t realize he swallowed until after he’s regained the ability to form a coherent thought, which feels like it took him about three hours.

“You’re spectacular,” he breathes, letting his legs drop to the mattress and wondering just how thin the walls of their cabin are.  
“Thank you. You’re, ah, quite a spectacle yourself. Jesus Christ, Brian Zeller.” 

Brian laughs, works himself up on his elbows and looks at Jimmy, who is still sitting between his legs looking about as dazed as Brian feels. “This sort of creates an expectation I’m not sure I can live up to.”  
“No expectations. Well. Some expectations. For the love of God, Brian, live up to at least some of my expectations?”

He sits there, with that half smirk Brian just want to lick right off his face, extraordinarily aroused and gesturing vaguely at his erection. Brian grins, scrambles up, places a hand flat on Jimmy’s chest, presses him down onto the mattress and extensively returns the favor.

It’s not that much later, when they’re tightly curled around each other and Jimmy is whispering affectionate things into his ear that contain a shocking amount of profanity, that Jimmy’s phone rings.

Brian considers chucking it out the window. Not even for the interruption, but because he’s fairly certain that it’s ringing to let them know a seventh victim has been found, and he seriously cannot handle seven victims in five days.

Jimmy answers, and Brian waits for his face to fall and for him to announce darkly they have a crime scene to go to.

That is not, however, what happens.

Jimmy turns to him, phone pressed to his bare chest, and gives him what might just be their equivalent of the holy grail at this point.

“They found an eye witness.”


	6. Chapter 6

The woman sitting across the table from Pendrell is small, rumpled, her dark eyes sunken and scared. She’s not looking at him, eyes darting to and fro, her hands clutching a dark blue scarf bunched up in her lap.

“Her name is Helen Rink, but everyone around here knows her as River,” Jack says. “Apparently Sue Reuser would take care of her every now and then.”   
They are standing in the dark, behind the one-way glass, as Pendrell speaks to her in the interrogation room of the local police department. Upon walking in Brian had briefly wondered why it was Pendrell talking to her and not Jack, but seeing how frail she is it makes sense. Jack would intimidate her too much and they wouldn’t have gotten a single useful word out of her. 

The woman mutters to herself, smoothing out the scarf, bunching it back up.   
“She’s not, you see, necessarily all there,” Jack finishes with a sigh, crossing his arms. 

Pendrell gently pushes a plastic cup of tea across the table, towards River. She eyes it, eyes Pendrell, and eyes the tea again. “Not drinking that. Don’t know where it’s been,” she says.  
“It’s just tea, River. I have a cup too, see? Let’s just have some tea together,” Pendrell says. He does, indeed, have his own cup of tea. He sits back, sips, and is quiet and relaxed and waits for her to unfold herself from the twitchy little spiral she’s worked herself into. She leans in and looks into her tea cup but doesn’t pick it up.

“Do you know why you’re here, River? Why we brought you here?”  
“I’m going to jail. Please don’t take me to jail. I’m scared.” Her hands pull violently at her scarf, her lips quivering as if she were a frightened child. 

“You’re not going to jail, River. Don’t worry. You and me, we’re just going to have a cup of tea, and we’ll drive you back to the shelter. You like the shelter, right?”  
“I didn’t do anything. You can’t arrest me for no reason.”  
“You’re not under arrest, River. You’re here because we need your help. Can you help us?”

It’s astonishing to see how good Pendrell is at this. His awkwardness, - the vulnerability always just present underneath his FBI badge and his nice suit - is completely turned around and used to create a persona about as threatening as a kindergartner. He’d probably be great with kids as well, now that Brian thinks about it, and he sits and watches as Pendrell slowly but surely coaxes River out of her self-imposed shell.

“It’s dangerous,” she says, shaking her head. “I can’t help you. I don’t know where it’s been.”  
“You’re safe here. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, would I?” They can’t see Pendrell’s face, but Brian can hear the smile in his words and feels like he should be taking notes, or something. 

“River, Sue took care of you, right?”  
At the mention of her friend’s name, she looks up, makes eye contact with Pendrell, before her face screws up with grief, and she begins to sob. 

“Sue died,” she wails. “He came for her, and she died. He took her, and she died. She was my best friend.”  
“I know. I know she was. It’s horrible. Can you help us find the man who did this to her, River?”  
She shakes her head again, fervently clutching the scarf to her chest. “He’ll come for me, he’ll come for me too. He comes to where you sleep and takes you apart.”

“We won’t let him do that, River. That’s what we’re here for. Can you tell me about that night? When he came for Sue?”  
She keeps shaking her head but talks regardless, the words stumbling out her mouth in a way that suggests she doesn’t even realize she’s saying them. 

“Sue was just sitting, just sitting. I was in the shadows having a rest. She found a smoke. She liked to smoke. The van pulled up, and they told us, they told us to stay away from vans, but sometimes… men would pay her for things sometimes. It was a nice gray van. You don’t think it’ll be a nice gray van that has a monster in it. Nice, even if it didn’t shine so much like other vans. He came up, and his eyes glowed, and his arm grew, and he killed her.”

“His arm grew,” Jimmy repeats quietly, mulling her words over in his head.  
“He must’ve hidden the baseball bat up his sleeve. Dropped it when he was ready to strike,” Jack says.   
“From where she was hidden, it must have looked like he transformed himself. No wonder she’s terrified. I’m shaking in my boots just picturing it,” Brian says.

“He took her and took her apart, and you found her back in pieces.” She’s sobbing like a child, rocking back and forth in her chair. Pendrell stands up, throws a look over his shoulder at the three of them behind the glass that tells them the interrogation is over for now, and crouches beside River. He places a hand on the back of her chair and sits there as she sobs.

Jack sighs, turning away and stepping out the room. “We’re not getting much more out of her.”  
“Not today. Maybe after she settles down,” Jimmy says, following him. “She’s the best witness we’ve got so far.”  
Jack rubs at his face, and they stand and wait until Pendrell quietly emerges from the interrogation room. They can hear River, still crying.

“Got her to drink some of the tea, at least. A lady from the shelter is coming here, I hope she’ll be able to calm her. She keeps rocketing back and forth between fear and grief, poor thing.”  
“Good work in there,” Jack rumbles, and Pendrell all but blushes.   
“Thank you. I wish she was able to tell us more, though. I had hoped she’d gotten a better look at the guy himself but all she really gave us is the color of the van. Gray.” Pendrell says. “I wonder what she means by it not ‘shining’ as much as others vans, though. Maybe the paint has faded?”

Something clicks. Brian can feel the pieces falling together in his head, can almost taste the epiphany, metallic and sharp, as if it takes place somewhere behind his teeth. It’s like turning the lights on in a dark room and spotting a massive spider on the wall – somehow already knowing it was going to be there, instinct telling him that as he walked in, but it never being a solid reality until the bright light took him by the hand and presented it to him.

He’s _seen_ a gray van in the past 24 hours that could use a paintjob.

“Jonah.”

“What?” Jimmy says.  
“Jonah! Jonah Medley, the kid with the summer job, at the motel! Oh, Christ.”  
“I’m not following.”

“The kid, Jimmy! His father dropped him off at work this morning. He drove a faded gray van! And he told me, he told me a few days ago his mother has lung cancer. _Lung_ cancer!”

He waves his hands, trying to get Jimmy to understand how weird a conclusion this is to draw, how he feels like he’s rolling off a giant hill and can’t make himself stop. This is not where he wants this to go, but it’s going anyway so he might as well drag as many people along as possible.

“Are you suggesting it’s a kid who is butchering homeless people?” Jack asks. There’s no hostility in the question – he can sense Brian is going somewhere and is giving him the space to do so. 

“Not the kid, his dad! He said… oh Hell, what did he say again? He barely mentioned his father, but said he wasn’t holding up so well. That’s he’s kind of lost in his own head. What if losing his wife to lung cancer caused him to snap, pushed him into psychosis? What if stealing other people’s lungs is him somehow getting back at the universe for what is happening to her?”

For a moment, Jack looks unbelievably angry, as if the suggestion alone is causing every last hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. Brian can’t place this response. There’s almost something personal to it, like when he was talking on the phone a few days ago, and Brian finds it difficult to see how human Jack looks in that moment of righteous rage.

Jack rears up, as if in preparation for something, but then crumbles entirely and whips around to point a finger at Jimmy. “Look up this guy’s record. Check if his fingerprints match the partial you found. I need more than a van and something a kid said if we want to get a warrant.”   
Brian has never seen Jimmy pounce his laptop so quickly.

The record shows that Arthur Medley, father of Jonah Medley, husband of Kim Medley, doesn’t have an entirely spotless past. His juvenile records are unfortunately sealed, but even after his eighteenth birthday, he was reported missing by his parents twice, arrested several times for petty theft, vandalism, and one shady instance of soliciting a street prostitute. 

He mellowed down completely about twenty years ago, got married, had a kid, and got himself a job at a manufacturer of abrasive products. A model citizen, almost. Thanks to his youthful indiscretions though, his fingerprints are very much available, and it doesn’t take Jimmy that long at all to compare the two.

“They’re a match. It’s his print. Arthur Medley’s print was on victim five’s hat.” 

They look at each other for a few beats that feel oddly like the entire world stopped turning. It shoots back into rotation, spinning extra fast to make up for lost time. Jack jumps up, starts barking orders at them, and Pendrel contacts the local police with such haste he nearly drops his phone.   
They’re going in, and they’re going in now. “Before he has the chance to add victim seven tonight!” as Jack so eloquently barks. 

This is where the action part begins, where Jimmy shoves a Kevlar vest into his hands just in case, where Brian straps his gun holster on, where he is reminded that, while he might be a scientist, a medical examiner,and a lab geek in a white coat who enjoys sticking needles into dead people’s eyes, he’s also still very much an FBI agent. 

Yet all that bravado, all the manliness that comes with donning a nifty FBI jacket and carrying a loaded weapon, promptly abandons him when they pull up to a perfectly normal suburban home, with a perfectly normal suburban lawn in front of it, where a perfectly normal teenage boy is fixing his bicycle chain in the light of the early evening sun.

“Hold back. Let me handle this first,” Brian throws at Pendrell, and he shrugs his jacket off and jumps out the car. The Kevlar vest is hidden under his shirt, but his gun holster still very much on his belt. He can only hope the kid won’t notice.

“Jonah? Hey, kid.”   
Jonah only looks confused for a split second. His entire expression then does a grand 180, his posture changes, and he looks so thoroughly terrified it’s painfully obvious - he understands exactly what Brian is there for, and it makes Brian feel miserable. 

“Is your dad here?”   
Jonah doesn’t answer right away, eyes flicking to his house, and back to Brian. “Why are you here?”  
“No worries, okay. We just want to talk to your dad. It’s going to be fine,” Brian says. His words are a lie, his smile is a lie, and the kid’s not stupid and knows it. 

It takes a moment, where Jonah considers the options Brian knows he doesn’t have, where he supposes Jonah weighs his loyalties and stands there a boy of barely sixteen who’s about to lose the only parent he has who’s not currently dying of cancer.

He looks up at Brian and makes a decision. “He’s inside. Please don’t hurt him. He’s all I have.” His words are so soft that they’re barely words at all, and Brian feels vaguely like curling up right there on the lawn and crying hysterically over them. This is not right, but it’s what they have to do.

He beckons, and the others follow. “Wait here, would you? We’ll be right back out, I promise,” he says to Jonah. Another lie, but what else can he say to him? ‘Please wait here. We’re just going to arrest your father and lock him away for the rest of his life?’

As Jack approaches the front door, Pendrell goes around the back, and despite the door being already open Jack pounds his fist onto the wood anyway. “Arthur Medley! This is the FBI! Come out with your hands over your head!” he calls out. 

Nothing. They step into the house, guns drawn, but find it quiet and surprisingly dusty. All the curtains are shut, leaving the house in dark shades of orange pink. Brain glances over his shoulder and sees Jonah standing still by his bike, looking thin and drawn and pale. 

“There’s nobody here,” Jimmy says softly. Pendrell approaches them from the kitchen back door, but there’s simply no life inside the house at all.  
“Jonah said he was inside,” Brian says.  
“He must have seen us coming and skipped out before we got to the door.”  
“And leave his kid to deal with us? Did you even _see_ his face?” 

Jimmy shrugs. Jack gestures at them and carefully goes upstairs, Pendrell staying behind at the bottom of the stairs. Brian turns into the kitchen, spots a knife block with two knives missing and feels a little nauseous. He wonders if Medley ever prepared lunch for his son with the bread knife, and that just takes his mind to places he doesn’t want it to be.

Jimmy appears beside him and stands and stares at the knife block as well. Thinking the same thing, probably. He wonders if the baseball bat was Jonah’s. He wonders if Jonah was ever in little league, like Jimmy used to be. 

It’s only when Brian turns and sees Jonah standing in the door opening he that realizes that Medley is not upstairs, and Medley has not left the house.

Jonah says nothing. He just pins him down with a look, his watery, blue eyes large and round and terrified, and points a trembling finger.

There’s a door. A plain, white door, leading to what Brian assumes would be the garage. He raises his eyebrows at Jonah, who nods slowly. 

He’s giving his father up. Brian has never seen that much courage in his life. 

The smell that hits them as Brian opens the door is unmistakable, and so strong that Brian can’t believe they didn’t smell it earlier. Rotting human tissue, stashed somewhere in the garage, a whole collection of stolen lungs putrefying away in the summer heat. He can only begin to guess at this guy’s pathology – kill people for their lungs, them leave them to rot? He doesn’t understand how a person can snap so badly, not even when their loved one is dying and they weren’t the most stable of guys to begin with, but thinks it’s probably for the best that he can’t.

The one man he knows who understands these things, after all, wound up snapping into a million deranged pieces himself.

He doesn’t need those associations right now. He frowns, steadies himself, pointedly does not think about Will Graham, and focuses on his breathing and on his gun. It’s heavy and real in his hand, the metal warm from his own hands as he holds it steady, trained on the floor. They walk in a half-circle around the garage, Jimmy on one side, Brian on the other, and the room is frightfully, worryingly still. 

They have not heard the garage door open. If he was in there, as he’s fairly certain Jonah tried to tell him he was, he hasn’t left yet. He’s still _there_ , and the garage is genuinely not that big.

There’s a large plastic box under a workbench. Jimmy bends, opens it, and straightens out so quickly that he has to steady himself to keep him from falling over backwards. “Found the lungs. Jesus Christ.”

Just as he’s about to tell Jimmy to be quiet, just as he’s about to try and tell him somehow that he doesn’t think they’re alone in here, is when his entire week comes to the kind of violent conclusion that, in hindsight, he might have known it was going to do.

He watches it happen. It’s not quite slow-motion, but it’s not what he’d call real-time either, more of a succession of images, a slide show, the outcome already on his corneas before it’s happened.

Medley steps in from the left behind Jimmy, from where he’d been hidden behind a metal tool cabinet . He has his baseball bat and raises it. Brian cries out. He’s not sure if it’s Jimmy’s name he calls out, it might just as well be a line of gibberish, but all he knows is his instincts tell him to make noise and that is exactly what he does.

Jimmy turns to look at him then swirls around as he spots Medley from the corner of his eye. He ducks. Medley swings. The bat connects with the side of Jimmy’s head with a surreal, muted _thunk_ , and Jimmy crumples to the ground.

Brian doesn’t think. He can’t think, he can’t rationalize, his training takes over, and he raises his gun, aims, squeezes the trigger. Once, twice, and Medley goes down.

He doesn’t hear Jonah’s screams until he’s already on his knees by Jimmy, gently taking his head between his hands and stabilizing his neck. Jimmy has been knocked unconscious, but is breathing steadily. There’s no blood, no visible signs of a skull fracture, but despite years of medical training Brian is genuinely too scared to check and make sure.

Medley lies a few feet away, quietly bleeding out on the concrete floor. “Call an ambulance!” Brian yells at nobody in particular. His phone is in his pocket, but he can’t bring himself to let go of Jimmy’s head long enough to pull it out and use it. 

Jimmy’s eyes blink open slowly, looking up at Brian with no clear focus. His pupils are both the same size, which is a fantastically good sign that Brian chooses to cling to.

“Ow,” Jimmy croaks.  
“Lie still,” Brian orders nervously. “You might aggravate your injury if you move. Medley hit you upside the head with a bat.”

“I remember,” Jimmy says. His eyes flutter closed and open again with a sharp, ragged intake of breath. “No really, ow. My head.”  
“Ambulance is coming. Don’t worry. I’m right here.” 

He hears Pendrell call the emergency services somewhere to his left. He doesn’t even know where he came from, but surely gunshots and people yelling pulled both him and Jack from wherever in the house they had wandered off to. He curses himself for thinking harshly of him when they met, now that he’s the one ordering the EMT’s to hurry the Hell up.

Jonah’s screaming disintegrates into outright crying, with long, stuttering inhales of breath coming out again in high-pitched, keening sobs. He sounds, and Brian is horrified to conclude it, relieved.

Sirens approach in the distance, and Brian could almost start crying over that himself. He doesn’t, just sits quietly and stares into Jimmy’s eyes, still looking up at him with an odd, devoted determination. He tells himself that he’s looking for signs of head injury, making sure Jimmy remains awake and alert, but he’s caressing the side of Jimmy’s forehead with his thumb and knows he’s lying to himself.

The sirens get closer quickly, but not quickly enough, and as Medley dies beside his box of lungs, Brian comes to the conclusion that Jimmy is possibly the best thing he has in his life and that he has no idea what he would have done if something had happened to him.


	7. Chapter 7

Brian is sucked into a maelstrom of paperwork, psych evaluations, and official statements on the nature of Arthur Medley's death. The shrink declares him fit as a whistle, the paperwork is rounded off, and Arthur Medley is put in the ground. Brian walks around with the whole experience under his arm for a good two weeks and can't quite bring himself to let it all go.

Jimmy is in the hospital for two days, Brian dutifully visiting him on both, before he is sent home with a hefty concussion and strict orders to rest. It's not in Jimmy's nature to sit at home and do nothing, but he's not left with much of a choice, wracked with fierce headaches and bouts of nausea if he dares to even move his head. 

He's not even up to talking on the phone, and as such, Brian hasn't actually heard from him in almost ten days. He doesn't want to attach too much importance to it, doesn't want to draw conclusions, but it's difficult not to. Brian misses him acutely, like a sharp pain under his breastbone every time he breathes and finds the B.A.U. lab empty of Jimmy's presence.

He considers dropping by Jimmy's place a few times, at one point already next to his car before he changes his mind and goes back up to his apartment. He's not sure he's wanted there. It's silly, he knows that, but he doesn't even know if Jimmy likes him enough to want him inside his home at all, let alone when he's sick and probably just wants to be left alone. 

He texts him a few times, to ask how he's doing, receives slow and surprisingly concise replies telling him very little, and Brian mopes around about that for a while.

It could have been worse. If Jimmy hadn't turned around when he did, if he hadn't already been ducking away, the bat would have hit him head-on and might have actually killed him. So Brian spends his time counting his blessings, and trying not to let his imagination getting the best of him by picturing a different outcome. The rest of it he can surely manage to clear up after Jimmy's done unscrambling his brain.

He's in the lab, writing up the notes on an autopsy he's just performed. Murder victim, a young woman, poisoned and subsequently skinned. The skinned part was new for Brian, and he was mildly excited about being allowed to be the one to examine her. They already caught the killer, anyway, which makes it easier to see this as an opportunity, and he's glad to know that at least this will be the only skinless girl he'll be performing an autopsy on for now.

"Go on vacation for a couple weeks and everything goes to hell. You guys can't do anything without me, can you?"

He turns to Bev, and smiles. She's tan, healthy-looking, and he's so happy to see her that he considers jumping up and hugging her. It'd be awkward if he did, though. "Hey, I solved that case, you know."

"You did! You and your big brain. Good for you."  
"Would've been nice if I would have seen the light like three victims earlier, though. Would have saved Jimmy some pretty heavy headaches, too."

She sits back on his desk, arms crossed. "Sure, let's all wish for clairvoyance so we can start solving murders before they even happen, that would be nice and efficient."  
"I don't know, didn't work out so well in that one Tom Cruise movie, did it?"  
She smirks at him for that. "Come on, you caught the guy. That's good."

"I didn't just catch the guy. I _killed_ the guy."  
She's quiet at that, something flickering across her face he knows has nothing to do with him and everything with someone else she must have had a similar conversation with at some point.

"Did you hear about the kid?" he asks her. She nods. "His mother died two days after I shot his father. Cancer. So he lost his dad, and he lost his mom, and he was there when I killed him, and it's just..." He frowns, trying to work out how to put this in a way that's not going to land like a punch to the face.

He doesn't have to. Bev is a clever girl, and she gets it. "Jonah Medley is not Abigail Hobbs, Brian."  
"Stunning amount of similarities though."  
"Stunning amount of differences. He's younger, for one. His father didn't try to kill him. I hear he's going to live with an aunt."  
"Also, I'm not planning on killing him and trying to eat his ear?"

More silence between them. "Don't turn the boy into your Abigail, Brian. He's not. The only similarities between the two of them live on this glossy top layer and nowhere else. It's okay to feel bad about shooting his father, but you solved a serial killer case and probably saved Jimmy's life. Don't make those associations. You're not doing yourself any favors."

He sighs. "I know. I can't help it. The whole case just brought up all these memories. It was different, but it wasn't different _enough_."  
She nods slowly, looking at him with this dawning comprehension that makes him feel a little self-conscious.

"I had no idea that what happened to Will affected you like that," she says, prodding her finger into the sore spot so acutely it immediately brings back that twitch, that spasm, the one that plagued him when Jack asked him onto the Medley case in the first place.  
"It affected all of us, didn't it?" he says evasively, but she's not having any of it.

"You were so avoidant. I was angry with you for that, you know. Why didn't you just tell me you were struggling?"  
He says nothing for a couple heartbeats, looking down at his fingers. He shrugs. "Everyone struggles in their own way. I prefer to ignore it until it goes away. As it turns out that's a pretty tough strategy to go for when people keep throwing reminders in your face."

"You idiot," she murmurs, but not unkindly. "Tell me these things, Brian. Tell them to Jimmy as well. Just say, oh, this is hard for me, but I don't want to talk about it, and then at least I won't rush off to Italy in an angry huff thinking you're an egotistical dick who doesn't give a shit."

"You rushed off to Italy just for that?"  
"Don't flatter yourself. But I might have thought a whole bunch of unkind things about you on the flight there."  
"Ouch. Though, to be fair, I probably am egotistical dick, I just... do give a shit. Most of the time."  
"Alright. And this was a heavy case, but you solved it, and it's all going to be fine."

"I still wish you could have been there," he says, and he means it.  
"I don't. Italy was awesome. I should've stayed there, married a nice Italian guy, and left you all here to deal with all this mess."

"You'd miss us too much."  
"The sad part is that that's actually true. Damn you both."

Their eyes meet, and Brian grins widely. "This is a _moment_ , Bev. Are we going to hug?"  
"No. Gross. Let's just go get some coffee. I still want to hear all about the zany room-sharing hijinks, after all."

He follows her out the lab and wonders just how much he should tell her. He wonders how much she would _need_ , actually, to grasp what on Earth happened in Michigan. He thinks he’s going to have to pay close attention to his words if he intends to keep Jimmy and his business mostly private. He can only assume that’s what Jimmy would want as well, anyway,. 

Again, he wonders if there will be something to clue Bev in on after Jimmy returns to work. He doesn’t actually know if Jimmy intends for the things that happened in Michigan to stay in Michigan. That small touch of doubt keeps making his nerves go all frazzled every time it pings in the back of his head. 

It’s much later that same day, after Brian has gone home, eaten yesterday’s leftover take-out for dinner, and is just contemplating maybe looking Jurassic Park 3 up on Netflix, that the doubt gets dealt with once and for all.

His doorbell rings. This is, and he’s a little ashamed to admit it, not so common. It’s not that he’s a complete recluse, but being an FBI agent isn’t necessarily conducive to a hugely active social life. He has a small circle of loyal friends, comprised mostly of other workaholics who understand putting the job first, but naturally they rarely drop by unannounced on a week night.

He thinks it might be Jimmy before he opens the door. He doesn’t know why he thinks that. Maybe he’s just a little bit clairvoyant after all, or maybe it’s just hope, but the thought shoots through his head before he opens and, as such, he’s not that surprised to find him at his door.

He’s looking better. He looks tired, paler than usual, a little thinner, but his eyes are much clearer than two weeks ago, and the massive bump he’d had on the side of his head was gone. He grins at Brian, and is holding what appears to be a cardboard pie box.

"Should you be driving?" is what Brian says to him.  
"I took the bus."  
"Should you be taking buses?"

“I’m sure the bus driver would have kindly driven me to the hospital if I’d decided to pass out along the way. Can I come in?”  
Of course he can come in, but Brian is momentarily distracted by a more pressing matter. “Is that pie?”  
“No, it’s a very small rhinoceros. I call him Carl. He really likes his cardboard home. Of course it’s pie, you dork! Let me in already before I get dizzy and faint across your welcome mat.”

Brian laughs and steps aside. Jimmy walks in, carrying the box as if it’s something extraordinarily precious, and then just stands in the middle of Brian’s apartment and looks around.

He’s never been there before. Brian understands his curiosity, his need to rapidly catalogue everything he sees and what this tells him about Brian, but he’s never seen anyone do it quite so openly before. Jimmy takes it all in, from Brian’s furniture to his kitchen to the framed photographs of his nephews on his bookcase, then holds the pie box up to Brian.

“Cherry pie. Thought you might be missing it.”  
At that, Brian just laughs again.   
“Although I can’t promise you that Quantico, Virginia, cherry pie will be as tasty as Traverse City, Michigan, cherry pie, but only one way to find out,” Jimmy says.

“You’re a rare gem, Jimmy Price,” Brian says fondly as he takes the pie box and carefully sets it on his counter. “You want to eat it now?”  
“Obviously. Dare I ask for a glass of milk?”

“Seriously?” He raises an eyebrow at Jimmy, who shrugs helplessly.  
“I’d rather have something else, but they gave me Tylenol for the headaches. I’m kind of fond of my liver.”  
“Well, consider me proud.” 

The cardboard box contain half a cherry pie of the lattice variety. It smells great, looks if possibly even better, and Brian cuts them both a generous slice. He doesn’t have pie forks, or plates that match for that matter, and pours them both a glass of milk. Solidarity and all.

Jimmy putters around his apartment, observing everything as if he’s at a crime scene. Brian half-expects him to pull a pair of gloves out his pocket and start dusting for prints. 

“How is your head anyway?” he asks, putting the pie and the milk on his coffee table.   
“Still attached to the rest of me. Sadly, that’s the only good thing I can say about it at the moment.” He sits down with a sigh, and laughs as he sees the two glasses of milk.  
“Headaches?”  
“Early and often. Throbbing ones that tend to set my skull on fire. I try not to exert myself. I don’t think I’ve ever slept as much as I have the past weeks.”

“Well, concussions can take up to six weeks to heal. You’re just going to have to take it easy for a while.”  
“Thank you for the reminder, Doctor Zeller, much appreciated,” Jimmy says darkly, and takes a large bite of his pie. “Oh, hey! This is good,” he adds with his mouth full.

Brian has to agree. It’s a good pie. A little sweeter than he’d like, maybe, but the crust is delightful and it’s actually a little warm from the oven still. The company doesn’t hurt either, he supposes. He’d happily shovel down a plate full of undercooked Brussels sprouts as long as he could sit and watch Jimmy make that face, that almost inward expression of enjoyment. 

He wants to tell him. He wants to tell him he missed him. He wants to put down his pie and kiss that look right off of Jimmy’s face. 

Naturally, he doesn’t do that. He takes a bite of pie too big for his mouth and looks like an idiot, that’s what he does, and Jimmy observes him with an entertained pity. 

"It could have been worse, though,” he says once he’s managed to swallow down the massive chunk of pie. “Medley wound up grazing you because you turned away at the moment supreme. If you'd have gotten the full brunt, you would've had a skull fracture at the very least, and those take months to heal."  
"I only turned away cause you shouted nonsense at me, though. So thanks for that."

“I was trying to shout your name.”  
“Well, that’s not how it came out. Doesn’t matter. You saved my life, you and your wonderfully timed gibberish.”

Brian smiles into his glass of milk. “Bev said that too, about me saving your life. Starting to feel like a genuine hero.”  
“Oh, she’s back from Spain?”  
“Italy.”  
“Oh. Whoops.”

Brian puts his glass down and sighs, staring at his now empty plate and wondering how bad it would make him look if he went and got himself another slice. “I missed you,” he throws out instead and thinks that maybe getting up and getting the second slice of pie would have been less embarrassing. 

“You do know you could have just dropped by my place any time you wanted to, right?” Jimmy says, raising his eyebrows.  
“You were sick, I didn’t know if you wanted me to show up and be complicated at you,” he says.  
“Oh come on, Brian, don’t be so dramatic. Of course I wanted you to. Well, maybe not if you were going to be complicated, but you didn’t _have_ to be.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure. And then I just waited for you, I suppose.”  
“For me to drag my sorry concussed self over to your door. I even brought you pie! You know why? Because I missed you too, you pain. Because I was sad and headachy and couldn’t stop thinking about how adorable you look when you sleep.”

Brian chuckles at that, a little wryly. “You did bring me pie. The pie is much appreciated. I just didn’t know if you wanted to continue our, uh, thing, outside of Michigan. And I didn’t want to bother you with that because you were sad and headachy, okay? I was waiting for you to get better.”

“Our thing.”  
“Our whatever.”  
“Please don’t call us a whatever. That’s just offensive on about thirty different levels. “

“Sorry. What do I call our… us?”  
Jimmy sighs. “Jesus, Brian. I have a _concussion_. Can you please not be so difficult?”

Brian says nothing, looks down at his hands, and picks at his cuticles. He knows what he wants to say, and he knows saying it would be stupid and rash, so he’s quiet and waits for Jimmy to continue.

“I like you. I’ve liked you for a while,” Jimmy says. “I’ve finally got you in a place where I can _tell_ you that. If you feared I was just going to let that go after getting hit in the head, you’re very wrong. I’m persistent, you know.”

“I do know that. Please don’t let it go. I’m kind of yours now.”  
Jimmy’s face changes at his words, as if he was prepared for more squabbling but didn’t quite expect Brian to come out with _that_. To be fair, Brian hadn’t expected himself to come out with _that_ either.

“That’s about the cutest thing anyone has ever said to me,” Jimmy says, still staring at him with the kind of shock that implies Brian just proposed to him. “And to have that come from you, of all people. You’re usually such a dick.”  
“Well, as I established with Bev earlier today, I’m a dick who cares.”  
“What?”

“Never mind, I’ll explain later. Maybe. Can we just kiss now? I’m not doing words so well.”  
Jimmy snorts out a laugh, puts down his glass and his plate, and scoots closer. He puts his hands on the sides of Brian’s head, just below his ears, and leans up to give a firm kiss that tastes like cherry pie and milk. 

Brian wraps his arms around Jimmy’s middle and pulls him in. Jimmy’s hands move, his arms go around Brian’s neck, and they sit and kiss like that for what feels like a beautiful eternity. It’s incredibly nice to be kissing Jimmy like this, on his own couch, in his own apartment. It’s a thing full of promises and hope, and he knows he’s falling in love with him, and he knows that that’s okay.

“Be careful with me, would you? My brain is still all mushy, after all,” Jimmy says softly, and he looks up with that damn smirk again, and Brian gives in and kisses it, and it’s as satisfying as he’d always imagined it would be. 

The kiss breaks, and they just sit and hold each other for a moment, quietly basking. “Remind me to thank Jack for a lovely week, by the way,” he mumbles, and Jimmy snorts a laugh into his neck.

They eat the remainder of the pie for breakfast the following morning. Jimmy agrees that cherry pie for breakfast really isn’t such a bad idea. Brian thinks he doesn’t give a damn as long as he gets to have it with Jimmy.


End file.
